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EXCURSIONS  OF  AN 
EVOLUTIONIST 

BY 

JOHN  FISKE 


Wfllst  du  ins  Unendliche  schreitcn 
Gch  nur  im  Endlichen  nach  alien  Seiten 
GOETHE 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

<$bt  Ritoetfibe  p«#  Cambnbge 

83925 


COPYRIGHT    1883   BY  JOHN  F1SKE 

COPYRIGHT    1902  BY  HOUGHTON,    MIFFLIN   fc  CO. 

COPYRIGHT    I9II    BY    ABBY    M.    FISKE 

ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


To 
REV.  JOHN  LANGDON  DUDLEY. 

DEAR  AND  HONOURED  FRIEND: 

Quarter  of  a  century  has  passed  since  I  used  to  listen  with 
delight  to  your  preaching  and  come  to  you  for  sympathy  and 
counsel  in  my  studies.  In  these  later  days,  while  we  meet 
too  seldom,  my  memory  of  that  wise  and  cordial  sympathy 
grows  ever  brighter  and  sweeter;  and  to-day,  in  writing  upon 
my  title-page  the  words  of  the  great  German  seer,  my  thoughts 
naturally  revert  to  you.  For  I  know  of  no  one  who  under- 
stands more  thoroughly  or  feels  more  keenly  how  it  is  that  if 
we  would1  fain  learn  something  of  the  Infinite,  we  must  not 
sit  idly  repeating  the  formulas  of  other  men  and  other  days, 
but  must  gird  up  our  loins  anew,  and  diligently  explore  on 
every  side  that  finite  realm  through  which  still  shines  the  glory 
of  an  ever-present  God  for  those  that  have  eyes  to  see  and  ears 
to  hear.  Pray  accept  this  little  book  from  one  who  is 
Ever  gratefully  yours, 

JOHN  FISKE. 

CAMBRIDGE,  October  23,  1883. 


CONTENTS 

I.    EUROPE  BEFORE  THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN         .  I 

II.    THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE               .  33 

III.  OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS          ...  68 

IV.  WHAT  WE  LEARN  FROM  OLD  ARYAN  WORDS  97 
V.    WAS  THERE  A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE?  131 

VI.    SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP       .             .  158 

VII.    HEROES  OF  INDUSTRY         .            .            .            .  184 

VIII.    THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION             .             .  191 

IX.    THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM          .             .  aai 

X.    THE  TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM      .  444 

XI.    EVOLUTION  AND  RELIGION  .  .  .268 

XII.    THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY   ...  279 

XIII.  A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF       .  .  .19* 

XIV.  IN  MEMORIAM  :    CHARLES  DARWIN             .  308 
INDEX  ........  339 


EXCURSIONS   OF  AN 
EVOLUTIONIST 

I 

EUROPE   BEFORE   THE   ARRIVAL 
OF  MAN 

IN  looking  over  any  modern  historical  nar- 
rative—  such,  for  example,  as  Knight's 
"History  of  England"  —  one  cannot  fail 
to  be  struck  by  the  disproportion  between  the 
amounts  of  space  devoted  respectively  to  ancient 
and  to  modern  events.  Of  the  eight  bulky 
volumes  of  Knight,  the  first  covers  a  period  of 
1432  years,  from  Caesar's  invasion  of  Britain  to 
the  death  of  Edward  III. ;  the  second,  bringing 
us  down  to  the  death  of  Henry  VIII.,  covers 
170  years;  the  third  takes  us  95  years  further, 
to  the  beginning  of  the  Great  Rebellion  ;  while 
five  volumes  are  required  to  do  justice  to  the 
two  centuries  intervening  between  the  overthrow 
of  Straffbrd  and  the  repeal  of  the  corn  laws. 
This  is  due  partly  to  the  greater  complexity  of 
modern  life,  and  partly  to  the  increasing  abun- 
dance of  our  sources  of  information.  It  is  true, 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

we  have  to  go  back  a  long  way  before  we  en- 
counter an  absolute  scarcity  of  information  ; 
there  was  a  great  deal  more  literature  in  the 
Middle  Ages  than  is  commonly  supposed,  and 
it  is  possible  to  describe  many  long  past  events 
with  great  minuteness  and  accuracy.  Mr.  Free- 
man devotes  the  greater  part  of  a  volume  of 
768  pages  to  the  political  and  military  history 
of  England  during  the  single  year  1066.  But 
the  history  during  the  spring  of  1 8 1 5,  if  treated 
with  equal  thoroughness,  would  fill  a  good  many 
volumes  as  big  as  this  ;  and  this  is  owing  largely 
to  our  increased  wealth  of  materials.  When  we 
go  back  far  enough  and  encounter  a  positive 
dearth  of  material,  we  can  devote  but  a  few 
pages  to  the  history  of  a  century,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  earliest  Teutonic  invasions  of  Britain ; 
or,  as  in  the  case  of  the  long  ages  before  Caesar's 
invasion,  we  can  barely  say  that  such  and  such 
races  of  men  inhabited  the  island,  and  we  can 
give  little  or  no  account  of  what  they  did.  This 
is  one  reason  why  we  find  it  so  hard  to  form  and 
preserve  an  accurate  mental  picture  of  the  dura- 
tion of  past  time.  It  requires  a  deliberate  effort 
of  the  mind  to  realize,  for  example,  that  the  in- 
terval between  the  proclamation  of  Constantine 
the  Great  by  the  Roman  legions  at  York  and 
the  invasion  of  William  the  Conqueror  was 
exactly  equal  to  the  interval  between  the  latter 
event  and  the  accession  of  George  IV.,  or  the 
2 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

adoption  of  the  Missouri  Compromise.  We 
may  know  that  it  is  so,  but  in  order  to  make  it 
seem  so,  most  people  will  have  to  stop  and 
think. 

The  case  is  somewhat  similar  when  we  try  to 
realize  the  relative  duration  of  the  successive 
geological  epochs  in  the  history  of  the  earth's 
crust.  We  are  naturally  inclined  to  overrate  the 
relative  duration  of  the  later  epochs.  Familiar 
as  we  are  with  the  established  classification  of 
periods  as  Primary,  Secondary,  and  Tertiary, 
we  fall  naturally  into  a  habit  of  regarding  these 
three  great  groups  of  epochs  as  substantially 
equal  in  value,  so  that  the  beginning  of  the 
Tertiary  period  is  apt  to  seem  one  third  of  the 
way  back  toward  the  first  beginnings  of  fossil- 
bearing  strata.  Probably  in  our  every-day  think- 
ing the  Tertiary  period  occupies  more  than  a 
third  of  the  space  that  is  occupied  by  the  whole 
recorded  life  history  of  the  earth,  —  mainly  for 
the  reason  that  it  is  so  much  more  completely 
filled  for  us  with  familiar  and  well-ascertained 
facts.  This  may  be  partly  because  organic  life 
has  really  been  more  complex  and  multiform 
since  the  beginning  of  the  Tertiary  period  than 
it  was  in  earlier  ages  ;  but  it  is  also,  no  doubt, 
because  our  sources  of  information  are  far  more 
abundant.  On  the  whole,  the  geologic  record 
of  the  Tertiary  period  is  much  more  completely 
preserved  than  that  of  the  two  earlier  periods ; 
3 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

we  see  more  clearly  into  the  details  of  life  at 
that  time,  and  consequently  have  a  more  vivid 
picture  of  it  before  us  ;  and  this  more  vivid 
picture,  as  is  natural,  usurps  an  undue  place  in 
our  minds. 

The  force  of  these  remarks  will  be  obvious 
when  it  is  stated  that  in  point  of  fact  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Tertiary  period  carries  us  back  barely 
one  twentieth  -part  of  the  way  toward  the  first 
beginnings  of  fossil-bearing  strata.  In  the  table 
that  follows,  I  have  tried  to  give  something  like 
a  just  idea  of  the  relative  lengths  of  geological 
epochs,  in  accordance  with  the  views  now  gener- 
ally adopted  by  geologists.  Let  us  first  suppose 
the  entire  lapse  of  time  since  the  oldest  Lauren- 
tian  strata  began  to  be  deposited,  down  to  the 
present  day,  to  be  divided  into  ten  equal  periods, 
or  aeons,  such  as  I  have  marked  off"  on  the  table 
with  dotted  lines.  Then  the  Laurentian  epoch 
fills  three  of  these  great  aeons,  to  begin  with. 
Here  we  find  (with  the  exception  of  the  Cana- 
dian eozoon,  the  organic  nature  of  which  has 
been  disputed)  only  indirect  traces  of  life,  such 
as  limestone,  which  probably  came  from  shells. 
But,  remembering  how  soft  and  perishable  are 
all  the  lowest  organisms,  and  remembering  how 
considerably  these  oldest  rocks  have  been  af- 
fected by  volcanic  heat,  we  need  not  be  sur- 
prised at  finding  the  records  of  life  in  them 
very  scanty  and  obscure.  Next,  the  Cambrian 
4 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 


TERTIARY. 

Recent 
Pleistocene. 
Pliocene. 
Miocene. 
Eocene. 

Mammals  dominant. 

ij 

Cretaceous. 
Jurassic. 

Reptiles  dominant. 

.... 

1 

Triassic. 

Earliest  Birds. 

9- 

• 

Permian. 

Earliest  mammals  and  reptiles. 
Earliest  batrachians. 

8. 

><' 

Carboniferous. 

7- 

M 

Devonian. 

Earliest  insects. 
Earliest  fishes. 

6. 

<! 

Silurian. 

5- 

S 

Cambrian. 

4- 

- 

Earliest  mollusks  and  crustaceans. 

3- 

e4 

Eozoon  ? 

a. 

Ok 

Laurentian. 

Indirect  traces  of  life. 

I. 

EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

epoch  extends  into  the  sixth  aeon,  and  then 
comes  the  Silurian,  which  takes  us  halfway 
through  the  seventh.  Mollusks  and  crustaceans 
swarmed  in  the  seas  of  the  Cambrian  epoch, 
but  there  are  as  yet  no  traces  of  fish  before  the 
upper  Silurian.  That  is  to  say,  three  fifths  of 
the  whole  duration  of  geological  time  had 
elapsed  before  the  lowest  vertebrate  forms  had 
begun  to  leave  plentiful  traces  of  themselves  in 
the  rocks.  The  Devonian  epoch,  in  which  we 
find  the  first  record  of  insects,  carries  us  half- 
way through  the  eighth  aeon  ;  and  we  are  brought 
well  on  into  the  ninth  by  the  Carboniferous  age, 
in  which  appear  the  earliest  air-breathing  ver- 
tebrates in  the  shape  of  frog-like  amphibians. 
The  vegetation  of  this  period  consisted  chiefly 
of  ferns,  club-mosses,  and  horse-tails  with  arau- 
carian  pines.  Nearly  nine  tenths  of  the  past  life 
history  of  our  globe  accomplished,  and  as  yet 
no  birds  or  mammals,  perhaps  no  true  reptiles, 
nor  any  tree  save  the  araucaria  or  the  arbores- 
cent fern  !  With  the  Permian  epoch  we  reach 
the  end  of  the  Primary  period,  and  nearly  com- 
plete our  ninth  aeon,  leaving  for  the  whole  of 
the  Secondary  and  Tertiary  periods  only  a  little 
more  than  one  aeon  to  be  divided  between  them. 
The  oldest  mammals  and  reptiles  yet  found 
belong  to  the  Trias,  or  earliest  Secondary  epoch  ; 
yet  so  many  small  mammalia,  inferior  in  type 
to  the  marsupials,  have  been  found  by  Professor 
6 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

Marsh  far  down  in  the  Trias  as  to  warrant  the 
belief  that  mammals  had  appeared  on  the  scene 
toward  the  close  of  the  Permian  age  ;  and  no 
doubt  the  same  will  prove  true  of  reptiles. 
Some  of  the  footsteps  on  the  Triassic  rocks  of 
the  Connecticut  valley  are  probably  footsteps 
of  great  struthious  birds  ;  but  the  oldest  bird 
actually  known  belongs  to  the  upper  Jurassic 
strata.  Throughout  the  Secondary  period  the 
real  lords  of  the  creation  were  the  giant  reptiles, 
stalking  over  the  earth,  splashing  through  the 
sea,  and  flying  on  swift  bat-like  wing  overhead. 
Of  these  innumerable  "dragons  of  the  prime," 
the  iguanodon,  from  fifty  to  seventy  feet  in 
length,  used  to  be  supposed  the  largest ;  but 
Professor  Marsh  has  lately  discovered  the  at- 
lantosaurus  of  Colorado,  nearly  one  hundred 
feet  in  length  and  thirty  feet  in  height,  —  the 
largest  land  animal  as  yet  known.  The  mam- 
mals contemporary  with  these  monsters  seem 
to  have  been  mostly  small  insect-eating  marsu- 
pials ;  and  the  forests  through  which  they  roamed 
consisted  mainly  of  palms,  tree-ferns,  and  pines. 
In  the  Cretaceous  epoch  such  deciduous  trees  as 
the  oak  and  walnut  had  appeared  on  the  scene, 
and  the  great  reptiles  had  become  less  numer- 
ous. But  it  is  not  until  we  enter  the  Tertiary 
period,  halfway  through  our  tenth  aeon  of  geo- 
logical time,  that  the  face  of  the  earth,  with 
deciduous  trees  and  flowering  herbs,  and  mam- 
7 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

mals  dominant  in  the  animal  world,  could  have 
begun  to  assume  anything  even  distantly  re- 
sembling the  aspect  under  which  we  know  it. 
Yet  if  we  could  be  suddenly  taken  back,  and 
permitted  to  inspect  a  landscape  of  the  earliest 
Tertiary  epoch,  we  should  probably  be  far 
more  forcibly  struck  with  the  differences  than 
with  the  points  of  resemblance. 

In  this  succinct  view  I  have  supposed  the 
whole  of  the  life  history  of  our  planet  to  be 
arbitrarily  divided  into  ten  equal  periods.  What, 
it  may  be  asked,  is  supposed  to  have  been  the 
actual  duration  of  one  of  these  aeons  ?  I  am 
well  aware  that  to  such  a  question  no  definite 
answer  can  be  given.  The  geologist  deals  only 
with  relative,  not  with  absolute,  quantities  of 
time :  he  can  only  say  that  the  time  has  been 
long  enough  for  a  certain  enormous  amount 
of  work  to  be  performed,  but  he  has  nothing 
with  which  to  measure  its  duration  in  years. 
Nevertheless,  while  fully  admitting  all  this, 
one  may  perhaps  venture  to  give  a  provisional 
answer  for  a  provisional  purpose.  For  the 
present  it  will  be  enough  to  recall  Sir  Wil- 
liam Thomson's  ingenious  speculations  as  to 
the  limits  of  the  antiquity  of  life  upon  the 
earth.  Reasoning  from  the  sources  of  the  sun's 
heat,  and  from  the  length  of  time  which  it 
would  take  a  body  like  the  earth  to  cool  so  as 
to  produce  the  present  increment  of  tempera- 
8 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

ture  as  we  go  beneath  the  surface,  Sir  William 
Thomson  concludes  that  the  crust  of  the  earth 
cannot  possibly  have  existed  in  the  solid  state 
for  more  than  four  hundred  million  years,  and 
in  all  probability  has  not  been  solidified  and  in 
fit  condition  for  the  support  of  vegetable  and 
animal  life  for  more  than  one  hundred  million 
or  two  hundred  million  years.  This  conclusion 
is  largely  speculative,  including  several  data  of 
which  our  knowledge  is  far  from  complete,  and 
it  is  of  course  extremely  indefinite.  It  makes  a 
good  deal  of  difference  whether  life  has  existed 
on  the  earth  for  one  hundred  million  years  or 
for  two  hundred  millions,  since  one  period  is 
just  twice  as  long  as  the  other.  Still,  in  spite 
of  this  indefiniteness,  there  is  a  growing  dispo- 
sition among  geologists  to  accept  Sir  William 
Thomson's  estimate,  as  showing  at  least  the 
order  of  magnitudes  with  which  the  geological 
chronologer  must  deal.  That  is  to  say,  while 
it  may  not  be  clear  whether  life  has  existed  for 
one  or  for  two  hundred  millions  of  years,  it  is 
not  at  all  probable  that  it  has  existed  for  a 
thousand  millions  or  for  any  greater  period. 
Even  this  amount  of  limitation  is  of  some  value 
as  giving  definite  shape  to  our  ideas,  and  as  re- 
minding us  that  geologists  who  have  habitually 
reasoned  as  if  there  were  an  infinite  fund  of  past 
time  at  their  disposal  have  probably  been  in 
error.  Provided  we  do  not  forget  that  Sir  Wil- 
9 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Ham  Thomson's  conclusion  contains  more  or 
less  that  is  hypothetical,  it  is  well  enough  to 
adopt  it  provisionally ;  and  I  shall  do  so  here. 
Of  the  ten  aeons,  then,  into  which  I  have  sup- 
posed geological  time  to  be  divided,  we  will 
suppose  that  each  is  about  ten  million  years  in 
duration ;  bearing  in  mind  that,  while  it  is 
highly  improbable  that  the  lapse  of  time  has 
been  very  much  less  than  this,  it  may  not  im- 
probably have  been  considerably  greater.  Ac- 
cording to  this,  the  minimum  antiquity  for  the 
beginning  of  the  Eocene  period  would  be  about 
five  million  years. 

If  these  periods  seem  short  in  comparison 
with  the  enormous  quantity  of  work  that  has 
been  done,  both  in  the  tearing  down  and  re- 
building of  the  earth's  crust  and  in  the  modifi- 
cation of  the  forms  of  animals  and  vegetables, 
it  is  no  doubt  largely  due  —  as  both  Mr.  Dar- 
win and  Mr.  Croll  have  reminded  us  —  to  the 
fact  that  it  is  almost  impossible  for  us  to  frame 
an  adequate  conception  of  what  is  meant  by  a 
million  years.  We  are  wont  to  use  these  great 
arithmetical  figures  glibly,  and  without  compre- 
hending their  import.  Mr.  Croll  has  done 
something  to  help  us  in  this  matter.  "  Here  is 
one  way,"  he  says,  "  of  conveying  to  the  mind 
some  idea  of  what  a  million  of  years  really  is. 
Take  a  narrow  strip  of  paper,  an  inch  broad  or 


10 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

more,  and  83  feet  4  inches  in  length,  and  stretch 
it  along  the  wall  of  a  large  hall,  or  round  the 
walls  of  an  apartment  somewhat  over  20  feet 
square.  Recall  to  memory  the  days  of  your 
boyhood,  so  as  to  get  some  adequate  concep- 
tion of  what  a  period  of  a  hundred  years  is. 
Then  mark  off  from  one  of  the  ends  of  the 
strip  jV  of  an  inch.  The  ^  of  the  inch  will 
then  represent  one  hundred  years,  and  the  en- 
tire length  of  the  strip  a  million  of  years.  It  is 
well  worth  making  the  experiment,  just  in  order 
to  feel  the  striking  impression  that  it  produces 
on  the  mind."  Mr.  Croll  further  reminds  us 
that  if  we  could  see  side  by  side  a  million  of 
years  as  represented  in  figures  and  a  million  of 
years  as  represented  in  geological  work,  our 
respect  for  a  unit  with  six  ciphers  after  it  would 
be  notably  increased.  "  Could  we  stand  upon 
the  edge  of  a  gorge  a  mile  and  a  half  in  depth, 
that  had  been  cut  out  of  the  solid  rock  by  a 
tiny  stream,  scarcely  visible  at  the  bottom  of 
this  fearful  abyss,  and  were  we  informed  that 
this  little  streamlet  was  able  to  wear  off  annually 
only  ^  of  an  inch  from  its  rocky  bed,  what 
would  our  conceptions  be  of  the  prodigious 
length  of  time  that  this  stream  must  have  taken 
to  excavate  the  gorge?  We  should  certainly 
feel  startled  when,  on  making  the  necessary 
calculations,  we  found  that  the  stream  had  per- 


ii 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

formed  this  enormous  amount  of  work  in  some- 
thing less  than  a  million  of  years."  l 

Now  all  the  fossil-bearing  rocks  on  the  globe 
have  been  formed  from  the  sediment  brought 
down  by  rivers  to  the  sea,  and  this  sediment  has 
been  worn  off  from  the  hills  and  valleys  and 
plains  of  ancient  continents.  In  recent  years  it 
has  been  attempted  to  calculate  the  amounts  of 
sediment  worn  off  by  various  great  rivers  from 
the  surface  of  the  regions  drained  by  them  ;  and 
the  results  are  very  interesting  and  instructive. 
The  Mississippi,  for  example,  draining  a  country 
with  scanty  rainfall,  and  having  its  sources  in  the 
Alleghanies  and  the  Rocky  Mountains,  where 
there  are  no  glaciers,  performs  its  work  of  denu- 
dation slowly.  The  Mississippi  wears  off  from 
the  whole  immense  area  drained  by  it  about  one 
foot  in  6000  years.  While  the  Po,  on  the  other 
hand,  having  its  sources  in  the  glaciers  of  the 
Alps,  works  with  great  rapidity,  and  lowers  the 
area  drained  by  it  at  the  rate  of  one  foot  in  729 
years.  The  mean  rate  of  denudation  over  the 
globe  seems  to  be  not  far  from  one  foot  in  3000 
years.  Now  at  this  rate,  and  from  the  action  of 
rivers  alone,  it  would  take  only  two  million  years 
to  wear  the  whole  existing  continent  of  Europe, 
with  all  its  huge  mountain  masses,  down  to  the 
sea-level,  while  North  America,  in  similar  wise, 
would  be  washed  away  in  less  than  three  millions. 

1  Croll,  Climate  and  Time,  p.  327. 
12 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

But  while  the  raindrops,  rushing  in  rivers  to 
the  sea,  are  thus  with  tireless  industry  working 
to  obliterate  existing  continents,  their  efforts  are 
counteracted,  here  and  there,  and  with  more  or 
less  success,  by  slow  upward  thrusts  or  pulsations 
from  the  earth's  interior,  which  gradually  raise 
the  floors  of  continents.  The  general  result  of 
the  struggle  has  been  that,  ever  since  the  earliest 
geological  periods,  the  surfaces  of  the  great  con- 
tinents now  existing  have  been  subject  to  irregu- 
lar oscillations ;  now  partially  or  almost  entirely 
disappearing  beneath  the  sea,  now  recovering 
ground  as  archipelagoes,  or  rising  high  and  dry 
to  great  elevations,  as  in  the  case  of  Africa.  The 
oscillations  have  not  ordinarily  exceeded  from 
6000  to  10,000  feet  in  vertical  extent.  There  is 
no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  general  relative 
positions  of  the  great  continents  and  great  oceans 
have  altered  at  all  since  the  beginning  of  the 
Laurentian  period.  Since  life  began  on  the  earth 
there  is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  bottoms 
of  the  stupendous  abysses  which  hold  the  waters 
of  the  Atlantic,  the  Pacific,  and  the  Indian  oceans 
have  ever  been  raised  up  so  as  to  become  dry 
land.  Once  geologists  thought  otherwise,  and 
land  was  turned  into  sea  and  sea  into  land,  by 
facile  theorizers,  as  often  as  it  was  supposed  to  be 
necessary  to  account  for  the  distribution  of  cer- 
tain lizards  or  squirrels,  or  for  changes  in  climate, 
such  as  have  left  marks  behind  in  many  parts  of 
13 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  earth.  The  greatest  physical  geologists  now 
living,  however,  —  such  as  Mr.  Croll  and  the 
brothers  Geikie,  —  are  convinced  that  there  has 
been  no  considerable  change  in  the  positions  of 
the  great  oceans  from  the  very  beginning ;  and 
this  view  is  ably  sustained  by  Mr.  Wallace  — 
who  is  probably  the  highest  living  authority  on 
the  distribution  of  plants  and  animals  —  in  his 
profound  and  fascinating  treatise  on  "  Island 
Life,"  lately  published. 

Though  the  general  relative  positions  of  deep 
sea  and  continent  have  not  altered,  however, 
there  have  been  frequent  and  striking  changes  in 
the  superficial  contour  of  land  and  sea.  Every 
continent  has  been  several  times  wholly  or  in  part 
submerged,  while  shallow  portions  of  what  is  now 
sea-bottom  have  been  thrust  up  high  and  dry ; 
and  in  this  way  the  climate  and  the  mutual  rela- 
tions of  floras  and  faunas  have  been  variously  and 
vastly  affected.  Thus,  during  the  Silurian  period, 
the  dry  land  of  Europe  lay  mostly  in  the  north, 
over  Finland,  Scandinavia,  and  the  German 
Ocean,  covering  also  the  British  Islands,  and 
stretching  more  than  two  hundred  miles  out  into 
the  Atlantic.  The  central  and  southern  parts  of 
Europe  were  then  covered  by  a  shallow  sea,  with 
islands  on  the  sites  of  Bavaria  and  Bohemia. 
The  duration  of  this  state  of  things  may  be  dimly 
imagined  when  we  consider  the  enormous  quan- 
tity of  sediment  worn  off  from  this  northern  con- 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

tinent,  and  now  constituting  the  Silurian  rocks  of 
Europe.  If  all  this  sediment  were  to  be  arranged 
in  a  longitudinal  pile,  according  to  Professor 
Archibald  Geikie,  it  would  make  a  mountain 
ridge  1 800  miles  long,  33  miles  wide,  and  some- 
what higher  than  Mont  Blanc.  At  the  close  of 
this  long  period  ridges  of  land  had  begun  to  ap- 
pear on  the  sites  of  Spain  and  Switzerland.  By 
the  Carboniferous  period  the  central  parts  of 
Europe  had  risen  so  as  to  form  an  archipelago 
of  low  islands,  surrounded  by  lagoons  and  salt 
marshes,  covered  with  dense  jungles  of  ferns 
and  club-mosses.  On  the  islets  grew  thick  for- 
ests of  pine,  and  as  repeated  epochs  of  submer- 
gence brought  all  this  teeming  vegetation  under 
water,  it  became  covered  with  detritus  of  mud 
and  sand  from  the  northern  highlands,  and  in 
this  way  was  preserved  to  form  the  coal-beds  of 
Europe.  By  the  Triassic  period  we  find  the 
general  elevation  of  Europe  increased,  so  that 
instead  of  an  archipelago  lying  amid  lagoons  we 
have  a  continent  thickly  dotted  over  with  salt 
lakes ;  but  in  the  next  or  Jurassic  period  the 
whole  centre  of  the  continent  was  laid  under 
water  again.  The  extent  and  shape  of  the  Euro- 
pean sea  of  the  Cretaceous  period  are  indicated 
by  the  extent  of  the  chalk  which  was  formed  on 
its  floor,  and  of  which  Professor  Huxley  has  given 
such  a  graphic  account  in  his  lecture  "  On  a  Piece 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  Chalk."  l  The  greater  part  of  Europe  might 
then  have  been  called  a  "  Mediterranean  Sea," 
extending  from  England  far  into  central  Asia. 

The  western  highlands  of  Scotland  remained 
above  water,  but  Bohemia,  Switzerland,  Spain, 
and  the  Caucasus  seem  to  have  been  submerged, 
or  reduced  to  islands.  Still  further  submer- 
gence occurred  during  the  Eocene  period,  and 
this  in  turn  was  followed  by  a  long  series  of 
elevations,  resulting  in  something  like  the  con- 
figuration of  Europe  as  we  know  it.  Late  in 
the  Eocene  period  the  Pyrenees,  Apennines, 
Alps,  Carpathians,  and  Caucasus  had  risen  to 
their  present  or  even  to  higher  altitudes.  While 
an  inland  sea  flowed  over  the  Netherlands  and 
Normandy,  the  rest  of  Gaul  was  dry  land,  and 
at  its  northwestern  extremity  was  joined  to 
Britain.  The  British  Islands,  in  turn,  were 
joined  to  each  other  and  to  Scandinavia  and 
Spitzbergen,  as  also  to  Iceland  and  Greenland. 
If  Columbus  had  lived  in  those  days,  he  could 
thus  have  walked  on  solid  land  all  the  way 
from  Spain  to  the  New  World. 

Two  immediate  consequences  of  this  great 
upraising  of  land  made  the  Eocene  period  an 
era  of  singular  interest  in  the  history  of  the 
European  continent.  The  first  was  the  inva- 
sion of  Europe  by  placental  mammals,  which 
speedily  supplanted  the  lower  forms  that  had 

1  Huxley,  Lay  Sermons,  pp.  192-222. 

16 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

preceded  them.  The  second  was  the  immigra- 
tion of  deciduous  trees  from  the  polar  regions. 
Before  the  Cretaceous  period  no  such  trees  had 
been  known  in  any  part  of  the  earth,  and  it  is 
the  opinion  of  Count  Saporta  that  the  habit  of 
dropping  the  leaves  was  evolved  in  adaptation 
to  the  extreme  differences  between  summer  and 
winter  temperatures  which  characterized  the 
polar  regions.  However  that  may  be,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  during  the  Eocene  and  Miocene  pe- 
riods deciduous  trees  and  shrubs  advanced  from 
Greenland  and  Spitzbergen  into  Europe,  and 
rapidly  covered  the  face  of  the  country,  evolv- 
ing gradually  a  great  diversity  of  forms.  By  the 
middle  Eocene,  along  with  cypresses,  pines  and 
yews,  fan-palms  and  pandanus  and  cactus  of 
giant  size,  the  oak  and  the  elm,  the  maple,  wil- 
low, beech,  and  chestnut,  as  well  as  the  gum  and 
bread-fruit  trees,  flourished  in  Britain.  The 
climate  of  western  and  central  Europe  was  trop- 
ical, as  is  shown  both  by  the  abundance  of  palms 
and  by  the  presence  of  crocodiles  and  alligators 
in  large  numbers,  while  the  mollusks  were  such 
as  are  now  found  only  in  tropical  waters. 

But  the  most  interesting  feature  of  Eocene 
Europe  was  the  peculiar  character  of  its  mam- 
malian fauna.  At  first  we  find  marsupials,  and 
carnivora  with  marsupial  affinities,  showing  that 
the  order  of  carnivora  was  then  only  beginning 
to  be  evolved.  Afterward  came  such  creatures 
17 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

as  the  anchitherium,  the  ancestor  of  the  horse, 
in  general  aspect  somewhere  between  a  Shet- 
land pony  and  a  pig,  and  with  three  separate 
hoofs  on  each  foot.  There  were  also  the  anoplo- 
theria,  or  common  ancestral  forms  of  antelopes 
and  deer,  as  yet  without  horns  or  antlers.  The 
highest  order  of  mammals,  the  Primates,  —  in- 
cluding man,  ape,  and  lemur,  —  was  then  re- 
presented by  the  adapts  of  the  Paris  basin,  the 
necrolemur  of  southern  France,  and  the  ccenopith- 
ecus  of  Switzerland.  Now  none  of  these  Eocene 
primates  answered  to  any  living  genus  of  lemur, 
though  the  lemurs  are  the  least  specialized  of 
primates  now  existing ;  but  all  these  Eocene 
primates  showed  signs  of  relationship,  in  one 
way  or  another,  to  the  hoofed  quadrupeds  living 
at  that  time,  which,  as  we  must  not  forget,  were 
only  on  the  way  toward  becoming  hoofed  quad- 
rupeds such  as  we  know.  Cousinship,  however 
remote,  between  such  extremely  specialized 
creatures  as  the  horse  and  his  rider  seems  odd 
to  think  of;  yet  the  lemuroids  of  the  Eocene 
furnish  the  link.  And  it  is  interesting  to  re- 
member that,  owing  to  the  closeness  of  relation- 
ship, the  lemuroid  adapts  was  actually  mistaken 
by  Cuvier  for  an  anoplotheriumy  or  primitive 
antelope-deer.  Of  all  anatomical  contrasts, 
what  can  be  greater  than  the  contrast  between  a 
solid  hoof  and  the  flexible  five-fingered  hand 
of  a  Rubinstein  ?  Yet  the  Eocene  great-uncle 
18 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

of  our  modern  pianists  could  be  mistaken  for 
his  contemporary  great-uncle  or  great-grand- 
father of  our  hoofed  quadrupeds  !  And  this  in- 
stance is  but  one  fair  sample  out  of  many  of  the 
changes  which  the  last  five  or  six  million  years 
have  wrought.  Speaking  generally,  it  may  be 
said  that  in  the  Eocene  age  there  were  carniv- 
ora,  and  there  were  ungulata,  and  there  were 
primates ;  but  these  orders  were  not  so  clearly 
distinguished  from  each  other  as  they  are  to-day, 
and  they  were  not  so  clearly  distinguished  from 
other  orders,  such  as  the  rodents  and  insectivora, 
while  in  many  cases  they  had  not  ceased  to  bear 
the  marks  of  their  marsupial  ancestry.  Or,  to 
put  the  case  in  another  way,  in  the  Eocene  pe- 
riod you  have  an  instance  of  hoofed  quadruped, 
but  you  find  no  instance  of  any  such  special 
form  as  horse  or  deer  or  camel ;  you  find  car- 
nivora,  but  you  do  not  find  a  clear  instance  of 
felis  or  canis  or  ursus,  —  not  even  of  hyaena,  an 
earlier  type  than  either  of  the  others  ;  and  you 
find  primates,  but  among  these  there  is  nothing 
yet  so  clearly  distinguished  as  a  monkey.  In 
short,  the  present  species  or  genera  of  mammals 
had  not  come  into  existence  in  the  Eocene  pe- 
riod, but  only  the  present  orders  and  some  of  the 
present  families ;  and  even  the  orders  were  not 
clearly  distinct  from  one  another,  as  they  are  at 
present ;  but  they  were  closely  interlocked,  very 
much  as  species  are  at  present.  In  other  words, 
19 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  whole  class  of  mammals  in  the  Eocene  age 
was  far  less  highly  specialized  than  it  is  at  the 
present  time. 

From  these  premises  Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins 
argues,  with  convincing  force,  that  man  could 
not  possibly  have  existed  in  Europe,  and  prob- 
ably nowhere  on  the  earth,  during  the  Eocene 
period.  At  a  time  when  the  order  of  ungulates 
had  not  clearly  developed  the  distinction  be- 
tween camels  and  pigs  and  horses,  and  when 
the  order  of  primates  was  only  just  beginning 
to  be  distinguished  from  other  orders,  so  that 
Cuvier  could  even  mistake  a  primate  for  an 
ungulate,  —  at  such  a  time  was  it  at  all  likely 
that  man,  the  most  highly  specialized  of  all 
primates,  or  of  all  animals,  could  have  existed  ? 
Obviously,  he  could  not  have  existed  at  such 
a  time.  The  supposition  is  absurd  on  the  face 
of  it.  As  Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins  says,  "  to  seek  for 
highly  specialized  man  in  a  fauna  where  no  liv- 
ing genus  of  placental  mammal  was  present 
would  be  an  idle  and  hopeless  quest." 

Coming  to  the  Miocene  age,  we  find  traces 
of  extensive  submergences  of  parts  of  the 
European  continent,  followed  by  reelevations. 
Considerable  portions  of  Gaul  and  Italy  were 
laid  under  water,  and  at  one  time  the  whole 
basin  of  the  Danube  was  covered  by  a  sea 
which  connected  with  the  Mediterranean  near 
Berne,  thus  reducing  Switzerland  and  Italy  to 

20 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

an  archipelago.  The  Alps,  however,  seem  to 
have  maintained  a  relative  height  as  great  as 
that  of  to-day,  in  comparison  with  the  lands 
about  them.  The  elevated  position  which  Brit- 
ain had  occupied  in  the  Eocene  age  seems  to 
have  been  kept  up  during  the  Miocene.  The 
whole  of  Britain  and  Ireland,  with  the  English 
and  Irish  channels,  the  German  Ocean,  and  the 
Atlantic  ridge  between  Scotland  and  Greenland, 
stood  at  an  average  of  nearly  3000  feet  higher 
than  they  do  to-day,  so"  that  the  whole  region 
remained  dry  land,  and  Gaul  was  still  joined  in 
this  way  to  Scandinavia  and  North  America. 
Above  this  high  level  the  Scottish  Highlands 
and  the  Welsh  peaks  rose  to  a  height  of  some 
7000  feet,  having  since  been  worn  down  to 
half  that  height  by  rain  and  ice.  Many  of  these 
great  mountains,  thus  standing  nearly  as  high 
above  sea-level  as  the  Alps,  were  active  volca- 
noes ;  and  this  chain  of  volcanoes,  of  which 
Hecla  is  now  the  most  famous  remnant,  ex- 
tended across  the  Atlantic  ridge,  all  the  way 
from  Wales  to  Greenland,  which  was  then  cov- 
ered with  a  luxuriant  vegetation  of  oaks  and 
chestnuts,  vines  and  magnolias.  In  the  earlier 
part  of  the  Miocene  age  the  general  climate  of 
Europe  resembled  that  of  Algiers  or  Louisiana 
at  the  present  day,  but  at  the  close  of  the  period 
it  had  become  somewhat  cooler,  though  still 
sub-tropical.  Gigantic  conifers,  like  the  famous 

21 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

trees  of  California,  400  feet  in  height  and  25  or 
more  in  thickness,  flourished  all  over  Europe, 
from  Italy  to  Norway.  Along  with  these  there 
were  cycads,  fan-palms,  palmettos,  figs,  laurels 
and  myrtles,  poplars,  oaks,  lindens  and  maples, 
acacias  and  elms,  camphors  and  cinnamons  and 
sandalwood ;  while  ivies  and  bignonias  grew  in 
great  luxuriance.  Cranes,  flamingoes,  and  peli- 
cans were  common,  as  also  geese,  herons,  phea- 
sants, paroquets,  and  eagles.  But  the  mammals, 
in  this  as  in  the  preceding  epoch,  present  the 
most  instructive  subject  of  study.  Opossums 
were  still  present,  but  had  vanished  before  the 
middle  of  the  period  ;  and  a  few  existing  genera 
of  placental  mammals  had  come  upon  the  scene. 
There  were  tapirs  and  small  rhinoceroses,  as  well 
as  squirrels,  moles,  and  hedgehogs,  and  carni- 
vores similar  to  the  weasels  and  civets.  Collat- 
eral ancestors  of  the  deer  and  antelope  roamed 
about  in  large  herds,  and  by  the  middle  of  the 
period  had  begun  to  acquire  small  horns  and 
antlers.  In  mid-Miocene  times  the  anchitheres 
disappeared,  and  were  succeeded  by  the  hip- 
parion,  much  nearer  in  structure  to  the  horse. 
The  mastodon  came  in  about  the  same  time, 
and  with  him  another  elephant-like  creature, 
the  deinotherium,  who  lived  in  the  water  like 
a  hippopotamus.  Carnivores  of  the  cat  family 
reached  their  highest  point  of  development  as 
regards  size  and  power  in  the  middle  and  upper 

22 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

Miocene :  the  machairodus,  or  sabre-toothed 
lion,  was  much  larger  and  more  formidable  than 
any  lion  or  tiger  now  existing.  The  same  period 
witnessed  the  arrival  in  Europe  of  true  apes  and 
baboons,  and  even  of  two  species  of  anthropoid 
ape,  allied  to  the  gibbons,  one  of  which,  the 
dryopithecus,  was  as  large  as  a  man,  and  has 
been  regarded  as  in  some  respects  superior  to 
any  modern  anthropoid  ape. 

Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins  —  to  whose  admirable 
treatise  on  "  Early  Man  in  Britain  "  this  essay 
is  under  great  obligations  —  argues  forcibly 
against  the  probability  that  man  occupied  Eu- 
rope during  any  part  of  the  Miocene  period. 
All  the  species  of  Miocene  land  mammals,  and 
several  of  the  genera,  are  now  extinct ;  and  Mr. 
Dawkins  urges  that  if  man  existed  at  that  re- 
mote period  it  is  incredible  that  he  alone  should 
have  subsisted  unchanged  amid  the  destruction  or 
metamorphosis  of  all  other  species.  But  it  seems 
to  me  that  Mr.  Dawkins  partly  answers  this 
argument  himself  when  he  observes  that,  "  were 
any  man-like  animal  living  in  the  Miocene  age, 
he  might  reasonably  be  expected  to  be  not  man, 
but  intermediate  between  man  and  something 
else,  and  to  bear  the  same  relation  to  ourselves 
as  the  Miocene  apes,  such  as  the  mesopithecus, 
bear  to  those  now  living,  such  as  the  semnopi- 
thecus."  Why  may  not  such  a  semi-human  man 
have  existed  in  the  Miocene  age,  the  race  hav- 
23 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ing  undergone  since  then  changes  parallel  to 
those  which  have  affected  the  apes,  or  to  those 
which  have  affected  generally  such  Miocene 
genera  as  have  survived  down  to  our  times? 
No  remains  of  any  such  creature  have  been 
found,  but  it  is  indisputable  that  artificially 
chipped  flints  and  the  artificially  cut  rib  of  an 
extinct  species  of  manatee  have  been  discovered 
in  mid-Miocene  strata  in  France.  Mr.  Daw- 
kins  is  inclined  to  adopt  M.  Gau dry's  sugges- 
tion that  the  flints  may  have  been  chipped  and 
the  rib  cut  by  the  great  man-like  ape,  the  dry- 
opithecus ;  for  although  it  is  not  known  that 
any  existing  apes  are  in  the  habit  of  chipping 
flints  or  cutting  bones,  yet  it  is  not  impossible 
that  the  dryopithecus  may  have  somewhat  sur- 
passed the  present  apes  in  intelligence.  On  the 
other  hand,  M.  de  Mortillet  regards  these  relics 
as  conclusive  proof  of  the  existence  of  man  in 
mid-Miocene  Gaul.  The  question  can  hardly 
be  decided  at  present ;  but  it  does  not  seem  to 
me  that  Mr.  Dawkins's  line  of  argument,  which 
is  so  conclusive  when  applied  to  the  Eocene 
age,  is  equally  conclusive  when  applied  to  the 
Miocene.  At  an  epoch  when  there  were  no 
true  apes  as  yet  to  be  found,  when  even  the 
lemurs  bore  marks  of  kinship  with  the  ances- 
tors of  ruminants  and  pachyderms,  and  when 
the  carnivorous  type  was  but  half  developed,  it 
would  clearly  be  idle  to  expect  to  find  traces  of 
24 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

man.  But  in  an  epoch  when  many  modern  gen- 
era had  come  into  existence  in  all  the  principal 
orders,  and  when  in  particular  there  existed  an 
ape  as  high,  or  higher,  in  organization  than  the 
modern  chimpanzee  or  gorilla,  I  can  see  no 
such  overwhelming  improbability  of  the  exist- 
ence of  man  himself.  No  doubt,  however,  if  the 
remains  of  Miocene  man  are  ever  to  be  found 
they  will  disclose  a  type  of  humanity  quite  dif- 
ferent from,  and  very  likely  much  lower  than, 
any  that  we  now  know.  It  is  not  at  all  im- 
probable that  such  remains  will  by  and  by  be 
discovered  in  some  part  of  the  earth,  if  not  in 
Europe.  By  the  time  the  strata  of  Africa  have 
been  explored  with  anything  like  the  minuteness 
with  which  those  of  France  and  England  have 
been  examined,  we  shall  be  very  likely  to  meet 
with  clear  indications  of  the  former  presence  of 
half-human  man,  and  it  will  not  be  strange  if 
such  indications  lead  us  far  back  into  the  Mio- 
cene epoch. 

In  the  Pliocene  period  the  geographical 
structure  of  Europe  began  to  be  much  more 
like  what  it  is  to-day.  Hitherto,  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  Tertiary  epoch,  large  por- 
tions of  Russia  and  Siberia  had  been  submerged, 
so  that  the  continent  of  Asia  did  not  extend 
nearly  so  far  north  as  at  present.  A  belt  of  sea 
appears  to  have  stretched  from  the  eastern  Bal- 
tic across  to  the  Persian  Gulf,  including  the  areas 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  the  Black  and  Caspian  seas  ;  and  another 
wide  channel  seems  to  have  run  west  of  the 
Ural  Mountains,  connecting  the  Caspian  area 
with  the  Arctic  Ocean,  so  that  the  warm  waters 
of  the  Indian  Ocean  found  a  free  passage  to  the 
very  shores  of  Finland  and  Scandinavia.  Ac- 
cording to  Professor  Archibald  Geikie,  these 
shallow  seas  disappeared  early  in  Pliocene  times, 
leaving  the  Aral,  Caspian,  and  Black  seas  in 
something  like  their  present  isolation.  While 
eastern  Europe  thus  began  to  acquire  its  present 
contour,  equally  remarkable  changes  occurred 
at  the  same  time  in  the  west;.  The  Atlantic 
ridge  between  Britain  and  Greenland  was  sub- 
merged, thus  separating  Europe  from  America, 
and  the  connections  of  Norway  with  Spitzbergen 
on  the  one  hand  and  Scotland  on  the  other  were 
also  severed  by  the  encroachments  of  the  North 
Sea.  But  the  British  Islands  were  still  joined  to 
each  other  and  to  the  Gaulish  mainland  ;  the 
whole  of  Britain  jutting  out  from  the  continent 
as  a  great  triangular  peninsula,  with  the  Shet- 
lands  in  the  apex.  The  volcanoes  of  northwest 
Britain  gradually  lost  their  fires  during  the 
Pliocene  age.  Icebergs  appeared  in  the  North 
Sea,  and  the  general  climate  of  Europe,  though 
still  milder  than  to-day,  was  much  colder  than 
it  had  been  during  the  Eocene  and  Miocene 
epochs.  The  vegetation  began  to  lose  its  sub- 
tropical aspect.  Bamboos,  evergreen  oaks,  and 
26 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

magnolias  still  mingled  with  maples,  willows, 
and  poplars  in  the  latitude  of  Lyons,  but  the 
cinnamon-trees  and  palms  became  restricted  to 
Italy.  Among  mammalia,  the  first  species  that 
has  continued  to  live  down  to  the  present  time, 
namely,  the  African  hippopotamus,  appears  in 
the  upper  Pliocene  strata  of  Auvergne.  The 
earliest  true  elephant,  though  of  a  species  now 
extinct,  appears  at  about  the  same  time;  and 
contemporary  with  him  were  two  species  of  mas- 
todon, of  enormous  size,  a  rhinoceros,  a  tapir, 
two  or  more  bears,  the  giant  sabre-toothed  lion, 
an  ancestor  of  the  panthers  and  lynxes,  and  two 
kinds  of  hygena.  There  were  many  species  of 
deer,  with  antlers,  but  for  the  most  part  unlike 
modern  deer.  The  ox  appears  first  in  the  upper 
Pliocene,  but  without  horns.  There  were  also 
wolves,  and  swine,  and  two  kinds  of  ape.  The 
hipparion  still  lived,  but  was  becoming  scarce, 
and  along  with  him  existed  a  horse,  less  special- 
ized in  teeth  and  feet  than  the  modern  horse. 

Now  from  the  fact  that  of  these  Pliocene 
mammals  every  one  has  long  since  become  ex- 
tinct except  the  hippopotamus,  Mr.  Dawkins 
again  proceeds  to  argue  that  it  is  not  likely  that 
man  inhabited  Europe  at  that  period.  The  al- 
leged instances,  three  in  number,  of  the  recur- 
rence of  human  remains  in  Pliocene  strata  of 
France  and  Italy  he  pronounces  unsatisfactory ; 
and  he  does  not  even  mention  the  brilliant  in- 
27 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

vestigations  of  the  Geological  Survey  of  Portu- 
gal, which  have  brought  to  light  flint  imple- 
ments of  undoubted  human  workmanship,  in 
great  abundance  in  the  Pliocene  strata  of  that 
country,  buried  under  1200  feet  of  superincum- 
bent rock.  These  discoveries,  set  forth  by  M. 
Ribeiro  in  1871,  are  cited  by  Professor  Whit- 
ney as  furnishing  conclusive  evidence  of  the 
presence  of  man  in  Portugal  during  the  Pliocene 
period.  In  his  admirable  memoir  on  "  The 
Auriferous  Gravels  of  the  Sierra  Nevada,"  Pro- 
fessor Whitney  has  collected  a  great  amount  of 
evidence  which  seems  to  prove  that  man  existed 
in  California  at  an  equally  remote  date.  Now 
it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  human  race  must 
have  been  in  existence  for  a  very  long  time  be- 
fore it  could  have  become  so  widely  dispersed 
over  the  earth  as  to  occupy  countries  so  distant 
from  each  other  as  California  and  Portugal.  For 
the  first  appearance  of  man  on  the  earth  we  must, 
therefore,  go  far  back  in  the  Pliocene  period  at 
any  rate ;  and  if  we  are  to  find  traces  of  the 
"  missing  link,"  or  primordial  stock  of  primates 
from  which  man  has  been  derived,  we  must 
undoubtedly  look  for  it  in  the  Miocene. 

Of  the  three  stages  of  the  Tertiary  period 
here  passed  in  review,  we  have  seen  that  the 
Eocene  was  characterized  by  the  entire  absence 
of  genera  and  species  of  mammals  identical  with 
those  now  living ;  in  the  Miocene  there  were 
28 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

genera,  but  no  species,  identical  with  those  now 
living ;  in  the  Pliocene  there  was  at  least  one 
species  in  Europe  that  has  survived  to  the  pre- 
sent day.  When  we  come  to  the  Pleistocene 
age,  we  find  a  majority  of  the  species  identical 
with  such  as  still  exist.  But  in  regard  to  this 
Pleistocene  fauna  there  are  some  curious  circum- 
stances, which  show  that  the  climate  of  Europe 
had  begun  to  be  subject  to  vicissitudes  such  as 
it  had  not  known  in  the  earlier  Tertiary  epochs. 
Among  the  Pleistocene  mammals  of  Europe  we 
find  such  as  are  characteristic  of  warm  climates, 
—  as  the  lion,  leopard,  hyaena,  elephant,  rhino- 
ceros, and  hippopotamus ;  and  along  with 
these  we  find  such  as  characterize  sub-arctic  cli- 
mates,—  as  the  musk-sheep,  reindeer,  glutton, 
arctic  fox,  ibex,  and  chamois  ;  and  yet  again  we 
find  such  denizens  of  the  temperate  zone  as  the 
bison,  horse,  deer,  wild  boar,  brown  and  grizzly 
bears,  wolf,  and  rabbit,  to  which  may  be  added 
the  mammoth  and  woolly  rhinoceros.  Now,  as 
Mr.  James  Geikie  has  ably  shown,  this  singular 
juxtaposition  of  northern,  southern,  and  temper- 
ate forms  points  directly  to  great  vicissitudes  of 
climate.  It  is  quite  clear  that  when  the  reindeer 
came  down  as  far  as  southern  France,  the  climate 
must  have  been  very  different  from  what  it  was 
when  the  hippopotamus  bathed  in  the  Thames. 
We  know  otherwise,  from  purely  geologic  evi- 
dence, that  the  Pleistocene  climate  was  very 
29 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

extraordinary.  Hitherto,  during  the  Tertiary 
period,  the  temperature  of  Europe  seems  to  have 
been  steadily  but  slowly  decreasing,  from  the 
Eocene  epoch,  when  it  was  sub-tropical,  to  the 
end  of  the  Pliocene,  when  it  was  temperate, 
though  warmer  than  at  present.  But  in  the 
Pleistocene  epoch  there  were  at  least  four 
or  five,  and  probably  several  more,  extreme 
changes  from  a  warm  to  a  cold  climate,  and 
back  again.  This  period,  or  the  greater  part  of 
it,  has  been  known  as  the  "  Glacial  Epoch  "  or 
the  "  Great  Ice  Age ; "  but  recent  researches 
have  shown  that  over  Britain  and  central  Europe 
there  were  several  glacial  epochs,  alternating 
with  warm  inter-glacial  periods  of  long  duration. 
When  the  cold  was  at  its  maximum,  the  whole 
area  of  Finland,  Scandinavia,  and  Scotland,  with 
the  North  and  Baltic  seas,  was  buried  under  a 
stupendous  sheet  of  ice,  varying  from  1000  to 
2000  feet  in  thickness  ;  and  this  ice-sheet  sent 
off  glaciers  as  far  east  as  Moscow,  and  as  far 
south  as  Dresden,  while  the  Alps,  the  Pyrenees, 
and  the  mountains  of  Auvergne  became  centres 
of  glaciation,  inferior,  indeed,  to  the  great  north- 
ern ice-sheet,  but  still  immense  in  extent.  While 
the  climate  of  Pleistocene  Europe  thus  came  to 
be  similar  to  that  of  modern  Greenland,  parallel 
phenomena  were  occurring  all  over  the  northern 
hemisphere.  The  continent  of  North  America 
was  deeply  swathed  in  ice  as  far  south  as  the 
30 


EUROPE  BEFORE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN 

latitude  of  Philadelphia,  while  glaciers  descended 
into  North  Carolina.  The  valleys  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  supported  enormous  glaciers,  and  the 
same  was  the  case  in  Asia  with  the  Himalayas. 
It  was  during  these  recurrent  periods  of  arctic 
cold  that  the  reindeer  and  musk-sheep  found 
their  way  to  the  south  of  France,  while  over 
land-bridges  at  Gibraltar  and  Malta  the  leopard 
and  elephant  retreated  to  Africa.  In  the  inter- 
vals between  these  glacial  periods,  when  the 
climate  became  milder  than  it  is  at  the  present 
day,  the  arctic  mammals  travelled  northward 
again,  while  the  lion  returned  to  chase  the  bison 
and  elk  in  the  forests  of  Yorkshire. 

As  the  result  of  these  prolonged  and  repeated 
climatic  vicissitudes,  and  of  the  complicated  mi- 
grations entailed  by  them,  many  of  the  Pliocene 
mammals  still  living  in  Europe  at  that  time  have 
become  extinct,  —  such  as  the  gigantic  beaver, 
the  cave-bear,  the  sabre-toothed  lion,  five  species 
of  deer,  three  species  of  elephant,  and  two  of 
rhinoceros.  One  race  of  men  —  known  as  the 
"  men  of  the  river  drift"  —  had  taken  up  their 
abode  in  Europe  when  these  great  changes  were 
beginning,  and  struggled  with  the  extremes  of 
climate  like  their  enemies,  the  bears  and  hyaenas. 
The  discovery  of  flint  knives  has  abundantly 
proved  that  man  was  living  near  the  site  of 
London  before  the  big-nosed  rhinoceros  had 
become  extinct,  and  before  the  arrival  of  the 
31 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

musk-sheep  and  the  marmot  in  the  valley  of 
the  Thames  heralded  the  slow  approach  of  the 
northern  ice-sheet.  But  the  fact  that  human 
remains  of  a  date  even  more  remote  than  this 
have  also  been  found  in  Portugal  and  California 
shows,  as  I  have  said  already,  that  man  was  then 
no  newcomer  upon  the  face  of  the  earth,  but 
must  certainly  have  been  in  existence  for  many 
thousands  of  years,  though  as  yet  we  are  unable 
to  assign  either  his  primeval  habitat  or  the  pre- 
cise epoch  of  his  first  appearance. 

January,  188*. 


II 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF   MAN   IN 
EUROPE 

TOWARD  the  close  of  the  Pleistocene 
age  the  general  outlines  of  the  Euro- 
pean continent  had  assumed  very  much 
their  present  appearance  everywhere  except  in 
the  northwest.  The  British  Islands  still  re- 
mained joined  to  one  another  and  to  the  Gaulish 
mainland,  and  occupied  the  greater  part  of  the 
area  of  the  German  Ocean.  According  to  Mr. 
James  Geikie,  the  connection  with  Norway  again 
became  complete,  and  the  Atlantic  ridge  was 
again  so  far  elevated  as  to  bring  Scotland  into 
connection  with  Greenland  through  the  Faroe 
Islands  and  Iceland.  The  whole  of  Britain  stood 
at  an  average  elevation  of  from  600  to  1000 
feet  above  its  present  level.  The  Thames,  Hum- 
ber,  Tyne,  and  Forth  must  all  have  flowed  into 
the  Rhine,  which  emptied  itself  into  the  North 
Sea  beyond  the  latitude  of  the  Shetlands.  The 
glaciers  of  Europe  had  retreated  within  the  Arc- 
tic Circle,  or  up  to  the  higher  valleys  of  the 
great  mountain  ranges ;  and  the  climate  was 


33 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

beginning  to  assume  its  present  temperate  and 
equable  character. 

At  this  remote  epoch  Europe  had  already  been 
inhabited  by  human  beings  during  several  thou- 
sand years.  How  long  before  the  beginning  of 
the  Pleistocene  period  man  had  arrived  in  Eu- 
rope is  still  open  to  question ;  but  there  is  no 
doubt  whatever  that  he  lived  in  Gaul  and  Britain 
as  a  contemporary  of  the  big-nosed  rhinoceros, 
and  before  the  arrival  of  the  arctic  mammalia 
which  were  driven  from  the  north  as  the  glacial 
cold  set  in.  This  race  of  man  —  described  by 
Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins  as  the  "River-drift  Man" 
—  is  probably  now  as  extinct  as  the  cave-bear 
or  the  mammoth.  Late  in  the  Pleistocene  period 
it  disappeared  from  Europe,  and  was  replaced 
by  a  new  race,  coming  from  the  northeast,  along 
with  the  musk-sheep  and  reindeer,  and  called 
by  the  same  eminent  writer  the  "  Cave-Man." 
Both  the  Cave-men  and  River-drift  men  were 
in  the  stage  of  culture  known  as  the  Palaeolithic, 
or  Old  Stone  Age  ;  that  is,  they  used  only  stone 
implements,  and  these  implements  were  never 
polished  or  ground  to  a  fine  edge,  but  were  only 
roughly  chipped  into  shape,  and  were  very  rude 
and  irregular  in  contour.  The  Palaeolithic  Age, 
referring  as  the  phrase  does  to  a  stage  of  culture, 
and  not  to  any  chronological  period,  is  some- 
thing which  has  come  and  gone  at  very  different 
dates  in  different  parts  of  the  world.  It  may  be 
34 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

convenient  to  remember  that  in  northwestern 
Europe  it  seems  to  have  very  nearly  coincided 
with  the  Pleistocene  period,  provided  we  also 
bear  in  mind  that  the  coincidence  is  purely  for- 
tuitous. The  implements  of  the  River-drift  men, 
found  in  Pleistocene  river-beds,  are  very  rude, 
and  imply  a  social  condition  at  least  as  low  as 
that  of  the  Australian  savages  of  the  present  day. 
"  They  consist,"  says  Mr.  Dawkins,  "  of  the 
flake  •  the  chopper  or  pebble  roughly  chipped 
to  an  edge  on  one  side  ;  the  hache  or  oval- 
pointed  implement,  intended  for  use  without  a 
handle  ;  an  oval  or  rounded  form  with  a  cutting 
edge  all  round,  which  may  have  been  used  in 
a  handle  ;  a  scraper  for  preparing  skins ;  and 
pointed  flints  used  for  boring."  Man  did  not 
then  seek  for  the  materials  out  of  which  to  make 
these  weapons  or  tools,  but  "  merely  fashioned 
the  stones  which  happened  to  be  within  his  reach 
—  flint,  quartzite,  or  chert  —  in  the  shallows  of 
the  rivers,  as  they  were  wanted,  throwing  them 
away  after  they  had  been  used."  No  pottery  of 
any  sort  has  been  found  in  association  with  these 
implements,  nor  were  there  at  that  period  any 
domesticated  animals.  The  River-drift  men 
were  evidently  no  tillers  of  the  ground,  neither 
were  they  herdsmen  or  shepherds ;  but  they 
gained  a  precarious  subsistence  by  hunting  the 
great  elk  and  other  deer,  and  contended  with 
packs  of  hyaenas  for  the  caves  which  might  serve 
35 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

for  a  shelter  against  the  storm.  As  to  what  may 
have  been  the  social  organization  of  these  pri- 
meval savages,  nothing  whatever  is  known. 
They  were  a  wide-spread  race.  Their  imple- 
ments have  been  found,  in  more  or  less  abun- 
dance, in  Britain,  Germany,  France,  Spain,  Italy, 
Greece,  northern  Africa,  Palestine,  and  Hin- 
dustan. Their  bones  have  been  found  in  the 
valleys  of  the  Rhine,  the  Seine,  the  Somme, 
and  the  Vezere,  in  sufficient  numbers  to  show 
that  they  were  a  dolichocephalic  or  long-headed 
race,  with  prominent  jaws,  but  no  complete 
skeleton  has  as  yet  been  discovered. 

These  River-drift  men,  as  already  observed, 
belonged  to  the  southern  fauna  which  inhabited 
Europe  before  the  approach  of  the  glacial  cold. 
As  the  climate  of  Europe  became  arctic  and 
temperate  by  turns,  the  River-drift  men  appear 
to  have  by  turns  retreated  southward  to  Italy 
and  Africa,  and  advanced  northward  into  Britain, 
along  with  the  leopards,  hyaenas,  and  elephants, 
with  which  they  were  contemporary.  But  after 
several  such  migrations  they  returned  no  more, 
but  instead  of  them  we  find  plentiful  traces  of 
the  Cave-men,  —  a  race  apparently  more  limited 
in  its  range,  and  clearly  belonging  to  a  sub-arc- 
tic fauna.  The  bones  and  implements  of  the 
Cave-men  are  found  in  association  with  remains 
of  the  reindeer  and  bison,  the  arctic  fox,  the 
mammoth,  and  the  woolly  rhinoceros.  They  are 

36 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

found  in  great  abundance  in  southern  and  cen- 
tral England,  in  Belgium,  Germany,  and  Switz- 
erland, and  in  every  part  of  France  ;  but  no- 
where as  yet  have  their  remains  been  discovered 
south  of  the  Alps  and  Pyrenees.  A  diligent  ex- 
ploration of  the  Pleistocene  caves  of  England 
and  France,  during  the  past  twenty  years,  has 
thrown  some  light  upon  their  mode  of  life. 
Not  a  trace  of  pottery  has  been  found  anywhere 
associated  with  their  remains,  so  that  it  is  quite 
clear  that  the  Cave-men  did  not  make  earthen- 
ware vessels.  Burnt  clay  is  a  peculiarly  inde- 
structible material,  and  where  it  has  once  been 
in  existence  it  is  sure  to  leave  plentiful  traces 
of  itself.  Meat  was  baked  in  the  caves  by  con- 
tact with  hot  stones,  or  roasted  before  the  blaz- 
ing fire.  Fire  may  have  been  obtained  by  friction 
between  two  pieces  of  wood,  or  between  bits 
of  flint  and  iron  pyrites.  Clothes  were  made 
of  the  furs  of  bisons,  reindeer,  bears,  and  other 
animals,  rudely  sewn  together  with  threads  of 
reindeer  sinew.  Even  long  fur  gloves  were  used, 
and  necklaces  of  shells  and  of  bear's  and  lion's 
teeth.  The  stone  tools  and  weapons  were  far 
finer  in  appearance  than  those  of  the  River-drift 
men,  though  they  were  still  chipped,  and  not 
ground.  They  made  borers  and  saws  as  well 
as  spears  and  arrow-heads ;  and  besides  these 
stone  implements  they  used  spears  and  arrows 
headed  with  bone,  and  daggers  of  reindeer  ant- 
37 

83925 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ler.  The  reindeer,  which  thus  supplied  them 
with  clothes  and  weapons,  was  also  slain  for 
food ;  and,  besides,  they  slew  whales  and  seals 
on  the  coast  of  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  and  in  the 
rivers  they  speared  salmon,  trout,  and  pike. 
They  also  appear  to  have  eaten,  as  well  as  to 
have  been  eaten  by,  the  cave-lion  and  cave- 
bear.  Many  details  of  their  life  are  preserved 
to  us  through  their  extraordinary  taste  for  en- 
graving and  carving.  Sketches  of  reindeer,  mam- 
moths, horses,  cave-bears,  pike,  and  seals,  and 
hunting  scenes  have  been  found  by  the  hun- 
dred, incised  upon  antlers  or  bones,  or  some- 
times upon  stone ;  and  the  artistic  skill  which 
they  show  is  really  astonishing.  Most  savages 
can  make  rude  drawings  of  objects  in  which 
they  feel  a  familiar  interest,  but  such  drawings 
are  usually  excessively  grotesque,  like  a  child's 
attempt  to  depict  a  man  as  a  sort  of  figure  eight, 
with  four  straight  lines  standing  forth  from  the 
lower  half  to  represent  the  arms  and  legs.  But 
the  Cave-men,  with  a  piece  of  sharp-pointed 
flint,  would  engrave,  on  a  reindeer  antler,  an 
outline  of  a  urus  so  accurately  that  it  can  be 
clearly  distinguished  from  an  ox  or  a  bison. 
And  their  drawings  are  remarkable  not  only  for 
their  accuracy,  but  often  equally  so  for  the  taste 
and  vigour  with  which  the  subject  is  treated. 

Among  uncivilized  races  of  men  now  living, 
there  are  none  which  possess  this  remarkable 
38 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

artistic  talent  save  the  Eskimos  ;  and  in  this 
respect  there  is  complete  similarity  between  the 
Eskimos  and  the  Cave-men.  But  this  is  by  no 
means  the  only  point  of  agreement  between  the 
Eskimos  and  the  Cave-men.  Between  the  sets 
of  tools  and  weapons  used  by  the  one  and  by 
the  other  the  agreement  is  also  complete.  The 
stone  spears  and  arrow-heads,  the  sewing-needles 
and  skin-scrapers,  used  by  the  Eskimos  are  ex- 
actly like  the  similar  implements  found  in  the 
Pleistocene  caves  of  France  and  England.  The 
necklaces  and  amulets  of  cut  teeth  and  the  dag- 
gers made  from  antler,  show  an  equally  close  cor- 
respondence. The  resemblances  are  not  merely 
general,  but  extend  so  far  into  details  that  if 
modern  Eskimo  remains  were  to  be  put  into 
European  caves  they  would  be  indistinguish- 
able in  appearance  from  the  remains  of  the  Cave- 
men which  are  now  found  there.  Now,  when 
these  facts  are  taken  in  connection  with  the 
facts  that  the  Cave-men  were  an  arctic  race,  and 
especially  that  the  musk-sheep,  which  accom- 
panied the  advance  of  the  Cave-men  into  Eu- 
rope, is  now  found  only  in  the  country  of  the 
Eskimos,  though  its  fossil  remains  are  scattered 
in  abundance  all  along  a  line  stretching  from 
the  Pyrenees  through  Germany,  Russia,  and 
Siberia,  —  when  these  facts  are  taken  in  connec- 
tion, the  opinion  of  Mr.  Dawkins,  that  the 
Cave-men  were  actually  identical  with  the  Es- 
39 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

kimos,  seems  highly  plausible.  Nothing  can  be 
more  probable  than  that,  in  early  or  middle 
Pleistocene  times,  the  Eskimos  lived  all  about 
the  Arctic  Circle,  in  Siberia  and  northern  Eu- 
rope as  well  as  in  North  America ;  that  during 
the  coldest  portions  of  the  Glacial  period  they 
found  their  way  as  far  south  as  the  Pyrenees, 
along  with  the  rest  of  the  sub-arctic  mammalian 
fauna  to  which  they  belonged  ;  and  that,  as  the 
climate  grew  warmer  again,  and  vigorous  enemies 
from  the  south  began  to  press  into  Europe  and 
compete  with  them,  they  gradually  fell  back  to 
the  northward,  leaving  behind  them  the  innu- 
merable relics  of  their  former  presence,  which 
we  find  in  the  late  Pleistocene  caves  of  France 
and  England.  The  Eskimos,  then,  are  probably 
the  sole  survivors  of  the  Cave-men  of  the  Pleis- 
tocene period  ;  among  the  present  people  of 
Europe  the  Cave-men  have  left  no  representa- 
tives whatever. 

With  the  passing  away  of  Pleistocene  times, 
further  considerable  changes  occurred  in  the 
geography  of  Europe  and  in  its  population. 
Early  in  the  Recent  period  the  British  Islands 
had  become  detached  from  each  other  and  from 
the  continent,  and  the  North  Sea  and  the  Eng- 
lish and  Irish  channels  had  assumed  very  nearly 
their  present  sizes  and  shapes.  The  contour  of 
the  Mediterranean,  also,  had  become  nearly 
what  it  is  now ;  and  in  general  such  changes  as 
40 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

have  occurred  in  the  physical  structure  of  Eu- 
rope during  the  Recent  period  have  been 
comparatively  slight.  Of  the  mammalia  living 
at  the  beginning  of  this  period,  only  one  species, 
the  Irish  elk,  has  become  extinct.  The  gigantic 
cave-bear,  the  cave-lion,  the  mammoth,  and  the 
woolly  rhinoceros  had  all  become  extinct  at  the 
close  of  the  Pleistocene  period,  and  the  elephants 
and  hyaenas  had  finally  retreated  into  Africa. 
In  Europe  were  now  to  be  found  the  brown 
and  grizzly  bear,  the  elk  and  reindeer,  the  wild 
boar,  the  urus  or  wild  ox,  the  wolf  and  fox,  the 
rabbit  and  hare,  and  the  badger ;  and  along 
with  these  there  came  those  harbingers  of  the 
dawn  of  civilization,  —  the  dog  and  horse,  the 
domestic  ox  and  pig,  with  the  sheep  and  goat. 
A  new  race  of  men,  also,  the  tamers  and  own- 
ers of  these  domestic  animals,  had  appeared  on 
the  scene.  These  new  men  could  build  rude 
huts  of  oak  logs  and  rough  planks,  made  by 
splitting  the  tree-trunks  with  wedges.  Such 
work  was  not  done  with  chipped  flint-flakes. 
The  men  of  the  early  Recent  period  had  the 
grindstone,  and  used  it  to  put  a  fine  edge  on 
their  stone  hatchets  and  adzes  ;  so  that  theit 
appearance  marks  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in 
culture.  The  sharp  and  accurate  edge  of  the 
axe,  unattainable  save  by  grinding,  is  the  sym- 
bol of  this  new  era,  which  is  known  to  archaeol- 
ogists as  the  Neolithic,  or  New  Stone  Age. 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

The  huts  of  the  Neolithic  farmers  and  shepherds 
were  built  in  clusters,  and  defended  by  stock- 
ades. Wheat  and  flax  were  raised,  and  linen 
garments  were  added  to  those  of  fur.  The  dis- 
taff and  loom,  in  rude  shape,  were  in  use,  and 
grain  was  pounded  in  the  mortar  with  a  pestle. 
Rude  earthenware  vessels  were  made,  sometimes 
ornamented  with  patterns.  Canoes  were  also 
in  use.  The  dead  were  buried  in  long  barrows, 
and  from  the  almost  constant  presence  of  arrow- 
heads, pottery,  or  trinkets  in  these  tombs  it  has 
been  inferred  that  the  Neolithic  men  had  some 
idea  of  a  future  life,  and  buried  these  objects 
for  the  use  of  the  departed  spirits,  as  is  the  cus- 
tom among  most  savage  races  at  the  present 
time. 

The  celebrated  lake-villages  of  Switzerland 
belong  to  the  Neolithic  or  early  Recent  period ; 
and  the  remains  of  their  cattle  and  of  their  cul- 
tivated seeds  and  fruits  have  thrown  light  upon 
the  origin  of  the  Neolithic  civilization.  It  is 
certain  that  the  domestic  animals  did  not  origi- 
nate in  Europe,  but  were  domesticated  in  central 
Asia,  which  was  the  home  of  their  wild  ances- 
tors ;  and,  moreover,  they  were  not  introduced 
into  Europe  gradually  and  one  by  one,  but  sud- 
denly and  en  masse.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that 
they  must  have  been  brought  in  from  Asia  by 
the  Neolithic  men  ;  and  the  same  is  true  of  the 
four  kinds  of  wheat,  two  of  barley,  the  millet, 
42 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

peas,  poppies,  apples,  pears,  plums,  and  flax, 
which  grew  in  the  gardens  and  orchards  of 
Neolithic  Switzerland. 

This  rudimentary  Neolithic  civilization  was 
spread  all  over  Europe,  with  the  exception  of  the 
northern  parts  of  Russia  and  Scandinavia ;  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  lasted  for  a  great 
many  centuries.  It  certainly  lingered  in  Gaul 
and  Britain  long  after  the  valley  of  the  Nile  had 
become  the  seat  of  a  mighty  empire;  perhaps 
even  after  the  Akkadian  power  had  established 
itself  at  the  mouth  of  the  Euphrates,  and  "  Ur 
of  the  Chaldees  "  had  become  a  name  famous 
in  the  world.  Still  more,  it  is  clear  that  the 
Neolithic  population  has  never  been  swept  out 
of  Europe,  like  the  Cave-men  and  the  River- 
drift  men  who  had  preceded  it,  but  has  remained 
there,  in  a  certain  sense,  to  this  day,  and  con- 
stitutes a  very  important  portion  of  our  own 
ancestry. 

So  many  skeletons  have  been  obtained  of  the 
men  and  women  of  the  Neolithic  period  that  we 
can  say,  with  some  confidence,  that  the  whole 
of  Europe  was  inhabited  by  one  homogeneous 
population,  uniform  in  physical  appearance. 
The  stature  was  small,  averaging  5  feet  4  inches 
for  the  men,  and  4  feet  1 1  inches  for  the  wo- 
men; and  the  figure  was  slight.  The  skulls 
were  "dolichocephalic,"  or  long  and  narrow; 
but  the  jaws  were  small,  the  eyebrows  and  cheek- 
43 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

bones  were  not  very  prominent,  the  nose  was 
aquiline,  and  the  general  outline  of  the  face 
oval  and  probably  handsome.  In  all  these 
points  the  men  of  the  Neolithic  age  agree  ex- 
actly with  the  Basks  of  northern  Spain,  the  rem- 
nant of  a  population  which  at  the  dawn  of  his- 
tory still  maintained  an  independent  existence 
in  many  parts  of  Europe.  By  their  conquerors, 
the  Kelts,  who  led  the  van  of  the  great  Aryan 
invasion  of  Europe,  these  small-statured  Basks 
were  known  as  "  Iberians  "  or  "  westerners  " 
(Gael,  iver,  Sanskr.  avara,  "  western  "),  and 
"  Iberian "  is  now  generally  adopted  as  the 
name  of  the  race  which  possessed  the  whole  of 
Europe  in  the  Neolithic  age  and  until  the 
Aryan  invasions,  and  which  still  preserves  its 
integrity  in  the  little  territory  between  the  Pyre- 
nees and  the  Bay  of  Biscay.  The  Iberian  com- 
plexion is  a  dark  olive,  with  black  eyes  and 
black  hair ;  so  that  we  may  figure  to  ourselves 
with  some  completeness  how  the  prehistoric  in- 
habitants of  Europe  looked. 

It  is  probable  that  in  Neolithic  times  this 
Iberian  population  was  spread  not  only  all  over 
Europe,  but  also  over  Africa  north  of  the  De- 
sert of  Sahara ;  so  that  the  Moorish  and  Ber- 
ber peoples  are  simply  Iberians,  with  more  or 
less  infusion  of  blood  from  the  Arabs,  who 
conquered  them  at  the  end  of  the  seventh  cen- 
tury after  Christ.  And  it  is  also  probable  that 
44 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

the  Silures  of  ancient  Britain,  the  Ligurians  of 
southern  Gaul  and  northern  Italy,  and  the  rich 
and  powerful  Etruskans  all  belonged  to  the 
Iberian  race. 

In  very  recent  times  —  probably  not  more 
than  twenty  centuries  before  Christ — Europe 
was  invaded  by  a  new  race  of  men,  coming  from 
central  Asia.  These  were  the  Aryans,  a  race 
tall  and  massive  in  stature  (the  men  averaging 
at  least  5  feet  8  inches,  and  the  women  5  feet 
3  inches),  with  "  brachycephalic  "  or  round  and 
broad  skulls,  with  powerful  jaws  and  prominent 
eyebrows,  with  faces  rather  square  or  angular 
than  oval,  with  fair,  ruddy  complexions  and 
blue  eyes,  and  red  or  flaxen  hair.  Of  these, 
the  earliest  that  came  may  perhaps  have  been 
the  Latin  tribes,  with  the  Dorians  and  lonians; 
but  the  first  that  made  their  way  through  west- 
ern Europe  to  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic  were 
the  Gael,  or  true  Kelts.  After  these  came  the 
Kymry ;  then  the  Teutons  ;  and  finally  —  in 
very  recent  times,  near  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  era  —  the  Slavs.  These  Aryan  in- 
vaders were  further  advanced  in  civilization 
than  the  Iberians,  who  had  so  long  inhabited 
Europe.  They  understood  the  arts  which  the 
latter  understood,  and,  besides  all  this,  they 
had  learned  how  to  work  metals ;  and  their  in- 
vasion of  Europe  marks  the  beginning  of  what 
archaeologists  call  the  Bronze  Age,  when  tools 
45 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

and  weapons  were  no  longer  made  of  polished 
stones,  but  were  wrought  from  an  alloy  of  cop- 
per and  tin.  The  great  blonde  Aryans  every- 
where overcame  the  small  brunette  Iberians, 
but,  instead  of  one  race  exterminating  or  ex- 
pelling the  other,  the  two  races  everywhere 
became  commingled  in  various  proportions. 
In  Greece,  southern  Italy,  Spain,  and  southern 
France,  where  the  Iberians  were  most  numer- 
ous as  compared  with  the  Aryan  invaders,  the 
people  are  still  mainly  small  in  stature  and  dark 
in  complexion.  In  Russia  and  Scandinavia, 
where  there  were  very  few  Iberians,  the  people 
show  the  purity  of  their  Aryan  descent  in  their 
fair  complexion  and  large  stature;  while  in 
northern  Italy  and  northern  France,  in  Ger- 
many and  the  British  Islands,  the  Iberian  and 
Aryan  statures  and  complexions  are  intermin- 
gled in  endless  variety. 

We  have  now  carried  this  brief  account  of 
the  arrival  of  man  in  Europe  as  far  as  is  requi- 
site for  our  present  purpose.  Starting  from 
ages  of  which  only  a  palasontological  record  is 
preserved,  we  have  gradually  come  down  to  a 
period  almost  within  the  ken  of  history.  We 
have  seen  Europe  inhabited  in  succession  by 
four  distinct  races  of  men  :  first,  the  men  of  the 
River-drift,  who  belonged  to  a  warm  climate, 
and  who  during  the  Glacial  period  became  ex- 
tinct, along  with  many  of  the  sub-tropical  mam- 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

mals  with  which  they  were  contemporary  ;  sec- 
ondly',  the  Cave-men,  who  belonged  to  a  cold 
climate,  and  of  whom  the  Eskimos  are  now 
probably  a  surviving  remnant ;  thirdly,  the 
swarthy  Iberians  ;  and,/o«rM/y,  the  fair-skinned 
Aryans,  —  these  two  latest  races  having  by  in- 
termarriage given  rise  to  the  present  mixed 
population  of  Europe. 

Our  next  problem  is  to  see  how  far  it  may 
be  possible  to  introduce  anything  like  chrono- 
logy into  this  series  of  events.  How  long  is  it 
since  the  River-drift  men  inhabited  Europe  ? 
Or  when  did  the  first  Iberians,  with  their  pol- 
ished stone  axes  and  their  herds  of  cattle,  begin 
to  build  their  rude  villages  in  Switzerland  and 
Gaul  ?  To  such  questions  no  very  positive  an- 
swers can  be  returned.  But  still  we  are  not 
left  wholly  in  the  dark.  A  method  of  inquiry 
can  be  pointed  out,  by  following  which  we  may 
at  least  come  to  understand  the  "  orders  of 
magnitudes  "  in  time  with  which  we  have  to 
deal.  We  can  substitute  partially  definite  con- 
ceptions for  wholly  vague  ones.  And  we  can 
see  how,  by  following  the  same  line  of  inquiry 
with  more  ample  data,  it  may  be  possible  by 
and  by  to  introduce  something  like  chronology 
into  the  geologic  history  of  the  earth's  sur- 
face. 

The  so-called  "  Glacial  epoch  "  here  all  at 
once  acquires  a  wonderful  interest  for  us.  We 
47 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

have  seen  that  it  is  certain  that  men  inhabited 
Britain  contemporaneously  with  the  big-nosed 
rhinoceros,  which  became  extinct  about  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Glacial  period.  How  long  men 
lived  upon  the  earth  before  that  time  we  do  not 
know  ;  but  it  is  clearly  established  that  there 
were  men  in  Britain  then.  It  would  accordingly 
be  very  interesting  to  know  when  the  Glacial 
period  began  to  come  on  in  Europe.  But  on 
this  point  it  has  already  become  possible  to 
form  something  like  a  definite  opinion. 

To  understand  how  we  can  arrive  at  a  date 
for  the  Glacial  period,  it  is  necessary  first  to 
understand  the  cause  of  that  wonderful  change 
of  climate  which  allowed  all  Europe  as  far 
south  as  Dresden,  and  all  America  as  far  south 
as  Philadelphia,  to  become  swathed  in  an  ice- 
sheet  like  that  which  now  covers  Greenland. 
The  causes  of  this  event  were  many  and  com- 
plicated, but  the  arch-cause  —  the  cause  which 
unlocked  all  the  others  and  set  them  going  — 
was  an  astronomical  cause.  It  has  been  proved 
by  Mr.  Croll  that  the  primary  cause  of  the  gla- 
ciation  of  the  northern  hemisphere  was  a  change 
in  the  shape  of  the  earth's  orbit,  such  as  had 
occurred  before  and  will  occur  again ;  and  the 
dates  of  these  changes  in  the  orbit,  whether  past 
or  future,  can  be  determined  by  astronomical 
methods  with  great  accuracy. 

The  reason  why  the  weather  is  warmer  in 
48 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

summer  than  in  winter  is  that  in  summer  the 
days  are  longer  than  the  nights,  so  that  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth  receives  more  heat  in  the  day- 
time than  it  can  lose  by  radiation  during  the 
night ;  while  in  winter  the  case  is  exactly  the 
reverse.  Another  circumstance  tends  to  make 
the  earth  warmer  at  one  time  than  another,  — 
namely,  the  fact  that  the  earth's  orbit  is  not 
quite  circular,  but  slightly  elliptical  or  eccentric, 
so  that  at  one  season  of  the  year  the  earth  is 
nearer  to  or  farther  from  the  sun  than  at  another 
season.  At  present  the  northern  hemisphere  is 
nearest  the  sun  in  winter  and  farthest  from  it  in 
summer,  but  the  difference  is  only  about  3,000,- 
ooo  miles.  It  must  also  be  remembered  that 
when  the  earth  is  near  perihelion  it  moves  faster 
than  when  it  is  near  aphelion,  so  that  the  sea- 
son when  it  is  nearer  the  sun  is  always  a  little 
shorter  than  the  season  when  it  is  farther  from 
the  sun.  Thus  in  our  northern  hemisphere  at 
present  the  winter  half  of  the  year,  or  the  inter- 
val from  the  autumnal  to  the  vernal  equinox,  is 
nearly  eight  days  shorter  than  the  summer  half 
of  the  year.  Thus  the  difference  in  length  be- 
tween our  summer  and  winter  seasons,  and  the 
difference  between  our  distances  from  the  sun 
at  the  two  extremes  of  the  year,  are  not  great 
differences,  but  the  advantage,  such  as  it  is,  is 
on  the  side  of  summer. 

But  these  relations  between  the  earth  and  the 
49 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

sun  are  perpetually  altering.  First,  owing  to 
the  great  revolution  known  as  the  "  precession 
of  the  equinoxes,"  the  earth's  perihelion  10,500 
years  ago  came  in  midsummer  in  the  northern 
hemisphere,  and  it  will  come  so  again  10,500 
years  hence.  In  this  state  of  things  the  winter 
half  of  the  year  was  and  will  be  eight  days 
longer  than  the  summer  half.  Secondly,  the 
shape  of  the  earth's  orbit  changes  from  time 
to  time,  under  the  influence  of  the  variously 
compounded  attractions  exerted  upon  it  by  its 
companion  planets.  These  changes  occur  at 
irregular  intervals,  but  they  admit  of  accurate 
calculation,  and  have  been  computed  for  3,000,- 
ooo  years  in  the  past  and  1,000,000  years  in 
the  future  by  Mr.  Croll,  from  formulas  fur- 
nished by  Leverrier.  It  has  thus  been  ascer- 
tained that  at  three  several  times  within  the 
past  3,000,000  years  the  earth's  orbit  has  be- 
come very  much  elongated,  so  that  the  differ- 
ence between  its  greatest  and  least  distances 
from  the  sun  has  been  between  four  and  five 
times  as  great  as  at  present,  —  that  is,  it  has 
been  from  12,000,000  to  14,000,000  miles. 
The  first  of  these  periods  of  high  eccentricity 
began  2,650,000  years  ago  and  lasted  200,000 
years;  the  second  began  880,000  years  ago, 
and  lasted  1 80,000  years  ;  the  third  began  240,- 
ooo  years  ago,  and  lasted  1 60,000  years.  For 
the  last  50,000  years,  the  departure  of  the 

5° 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

earth's  orbit  from  the  circular  form  has  been 
exceptionally  small. 

Now  let  us  suppose  one  of  these  long  periods 
of  high  eccentricity  to  coincide  with  one  of  the 
short  periods  of  10,500  years,  when  the  north- 
ern hemisphere  has  its  aphelion  in  winter ;  and 
this,  of  course,  has  happened  not  once  only, 
but  a  great  many  times.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, the  northern  hemisphere  is  98,000,000 
miles  distant  from  the  sun  at  midwinter  instead 
of  9 1 ,000,000,  as  at  present,  and  the  winter  is 
twenty-six  days  longer  than  the  summer  instead 
of  eight  days  shorter,  as  at  present.  On  the 
other  hand,  at  midsummer  the  sun's  distance  is 
only  86,000,000  miles  instead  of  94,000,000, 
as  at  present.  Now  how  must  this  state  of 
things  affect  the  climate  of  the  northern  hemi- 
sphere ? 

In  the  first  place,  the  diminution  in  the 
quantity  of  heat  received  daily  from  the  sun  in 
winter  would  be  such  as  to  lower  the  average 
temperature  of  the  whole  northern  hemisphere 
by  about  35°  F.,  so  that  for  example  the  aver- 
age January  temperature  of  England,  which  is 
now  39°,  would  fall  to  4°.  And,  conversely, 
heat  enough  would  be  received  to  raise  the 
mean  summer  temperature  by  about  60°  above 
what  it  now  is. 

So  far  very  good,  as  concerns  the  amount  of 
heat  actually  received  from  the  sun.  But  would 
5' 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  summer  temperature  be  raised  like  this  ?  It 
would  not ;  and  this  is  because  our  earth  has  a 
means  of  storing  up  cold,  so  to  speak,  which 
gives  winter  the  advantage  over  summer  in  such 
a  contest.  With  the  mean  January  temperature 
of  England  at  4°  F.  instead  of  39°,  all  the  mois- 
ture which  now  falls  as  rain  would  fall  as  snow, 
and  would  accumulate  on  the  ground.  At  the 
coming  of  summer,  all  the  snow  and  ice  would 
have  to  be  melted,  and  it  takes  a  great  deal  of 
heat  to  melt  snow  and  ice.  As  Mr.  Wallace 
graphically  puts  it,  "  to  melt  a  layer  of  ice  only 
one  and  a  half  inch  thick  would  require  as  much 
heat  as  would  raise  a  stratum  of  air  800  feet 
thick  from  the  freezing-point  to  the  tropical 
heat  of  88°  F. ! "  Until  the  snow  is  all  melted, 
no  amount  of  solar  heat  can  raise  the  tempera- 
ture much  above  the  freezing-point ;  and  this 
is  the  reason  why,  in  regions  where  much  mois- 
ture is  condensed  as  snow,  as  in  Greenland,  and 
at  the  summits  of  the  Andes,  Alps,  and  Hima- 
layas, snow  is  perpetual.  So  that,  in  the  case 
we  have  supposed,  the  extra  heat  received  from 
the  sun  in  the  short  summer  would  largely  be 
exhausted  in  melting  the  snow,  and,  instead  of 
raising  the  mean  temperature  60°,  it  is  doubtful 
if  it  would  raise  it  at  all  above  the  point  which 
it  attains  at  the  present  time.  Besides  all  this, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  rapid  melting 
of  great  masses  of  snow  produces  fog,  and  thus 
52 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

not  only  obscures  the  sun's  heat,  but  leads  to 
further  heavy  condensation  in  the  shape  of  cold 
rains.  Now  bear  in  mind  that  this  state  of 
things  goes  on  for  at  least  half  of  the  period 
of  10,500  years,  when  the  aphelion  of  the 
northern  hemisphere  occurs  between  September 
and  March,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  how  the  snow 
and  ice  must  so  far  gain  the  upper  hand  that 
the  intense  summer  heat  cannot  produce  any 
considerable  impression  on  them,  but  the  region 
of  "  eternal  snow,"  no  longer  confined  to  the 
tops  of  lofty  mountains,  descends  to  the  sea- 
level  throughout  a  large  part  of  the  northern 
hemisphere.  Thus  we  get  far  toward  an  expla- 
nation of  the  causes  of  the  Glacial  epoch.  But 
still  other  causes  have  conspired  with  those  here 
pointed  out  to  enhance  the  general  effect. 

While  the  northern  hemisphere  was  situated 
as  just  described,  the  state  of  things  in  the  south- 
ern hemisphere  must  have  been  entirely  differ- 
ent. There  the  perihelion  occurring  in  winter 
and  the  aphelion  in  summer,  with  the  same  high 
eccentricity,  the  summer  would  be  twenty-six 
days  longer  than  the  winter,  and  the  climatic  re- 
sult would  be  perpetual  spring.  And  this  would 
affect  the  flow  of  ocean-currents  in  such  a  way 
as  to  deprive  the  northern  hemisphere  of  its 
only  possible  chance  of  escaping  the  glaciation 
we  have  just  depicted.  Let  us  notice  this  point 
carefully,  for  it  is  one  of  great  importance. 
53 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

We  have  supposed  the  lowering  of  the  aver- 
age winter  temperature  of  England,  for  exam- 
ple, due  to  the  great  aphelion  distance  of  the 
sun,  to  be  35°  F.  There  is  one  way  in  which 
this  effect  might  be  partially  modified,  and  that 
is  by  the  equalizing  influence  of  the  Gulf 
Stream.  But  in  the  case  we  have  supposed,  this 
influence  would  almost  certainly  be  cut  off.  The 
direction  of  the  main  ocean-currents  is  deter- 
mined by  the  trade-winds,  and  the  trade-winds 
are  caused  by  the  difference  of  temperature  be- 
tween the  poles  and  the  equator.  As  the  heated 
air  at  the  equator  rises,  the  cooler  air  from 
north  and  south  flows  in  to  take  its  place,  and 
these  atmospheric  currents  flowing  from  the 
north  and  south  poles  toward  the  equator  are 
what  are  called  the  trade-winds.  The  strength 
of  the  trade-winds  depends  entirely  upon  the 
difference  in  temperature  between  the  equator 
and  the  pole ;  the  greater  the  difference,  the 
stronger  the  wind.  Now,  at  the  present  time, 
the  south  pole  is  much  colder  than  the  north 
pole,  and  the  southern  trades  are  consequently 
mucli  stronger  than  the  northern,  so  that  the 
neutral  zone  in  which  they  meet  lies  some  five 
degrees  north  of  the  equator.  The  trade-winds, 
pushing  stupendous  masses  of  surface  ocean- 
water,  produce  the  main  ocean-currents  ;  and 
accordingly  these  currents  now  tend  chiefly  from 
south  to  north,  so  that  most  of  the  heated  water 
54 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

of  the  central  Atlantic,  both  north  and  south 
of  the  equator,  gets  carried  into  the  northern 
temperate  zone.  In  this  way  the  Gulf  Stream, 
coming  northward  up  the  west  coast  of  Africa, 
sweeps  across  the  Atlantic  to  the  easternmost 
point  of  Brazil,  where  part  of  it  gets  deflected 
southward  toward  the  Antarctic  Ocean,  but  most 
of  it  flows  northwesterly  into  the  Gulf  of  Mex- 
ico, whence  it  is  deflected  northeasterly  toward 
the  European  coast,  giving  to  England  its  cli- 
mate of  perpetual  spring  in  the  latitude  of  Lab- 
rador, and  tempering  the  cold  of  the  North  Sea 
even  beyond  the  Arctic  Circle.  According  to 
Mr.  Croll,  the  quantity  of  extra  heat  which  the 
northern  hemisphere  receives  from  this  source, 
over  and  above  that  which  it  would  get  simply 
from  direct  solar  radiation,  amounts  to  fully 
one  fourth  of»the  latter  quantity.  But  when  thJe 
aphelion  of  the  northern  hemisphere  occurred 
in  midwinter,  along  with  a  very  high  eccentri- 
city, all  this  must  have  been  changed.  The 
tendency  of  these  circumstances,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  to  make  the  northern  hemisphere 
very  cold,  while  producing  a  perpetual  srjring 
in  the  southern  hemisphere.  Now,  when  once 
the  north  pole  had  become  colder  than  the  south 
pole,  the  northern  trades  would  begin  to  blow 
with  greater  force  than  the  southern,  until  after 
a  while  the  neutral  line  between  the  two  would 
be  shifted  south  of  the  equator,  and,  instead  of 
55 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  warm  waters  of  the  southern  tropical  ocean 
being  carried  into  the  northern  seas,  the  case 
would  be  just  the  reverse.  The  great  ocean- 
currents,  instead  of  all  tending  northward,  as 
they  do  to-day,  would  all  tend  southward.  A 
very  little  deflection  of  this  sort  would,  at  the 
easternmost  point  of  Brazil,  turn  the  whole  of 
the  Gulf  Stream  southward  down  the  coast  of 
South  America,  and  prevent  any  part  of  it  from 
flowing  up  into  the  North  Atlantic,  and  in  this 
way  the  progressing  refrigeration  of  Europe  and 
North  America  would  be  most  powerfully  en- 
hanced. 

Thus,  when  the  eccentricity  of  the  earth's 
orbit  was  three  or  four  times  as  great  as  at 
present,  and  during  the  period  when  aphelion 
in  the  northern  hemisphere  occurred  in  the 
winter  season  between  September  and  March, 
the  tendency  must  have  been  toward  perpetual 
snow  and  ice  over  a  large  part  of  the  north- 
ern hemisphere,  and  toward  perpetual  spring 
throughout  the  southern  hemisphere.  But 
when  winter  aphelion  occurred  in  the  southern 
hemisphere,  then  everything  was  reversed  ;  then 
the  tendency  south  of  the  equator  was  toward 
glaciation,  and  north  of  the  equator  it  was  to- 
ward perpetual  spring.  In  Europe  you  would 
have,  for  10,500  years,  a  period  during  which 
the  climate  would  gradually  become  more  and 
more  arctic  for  5250  years,  thenceforward 
56 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

gradually  becoming  less  severe;  and  upon  this 
would  ensue  another  period  of  10,500  years, 
during  which  the  climate  would  grow  more  and 
more  equable  for  5250  years,  thenceforward 
gradually  increasing  again  the  differences  be- 
tween summer  and  winter ;  and  in  a  period  of 
160,000  years  such  2i,ooo-year  cycles  would 
naturally  occur  nearly  eight  times.  So  that, 
upon  a  geological  survey  of  what  is  called  the 
Glacial  epoch,  we  might  expect  to  find  an  alter- 
nation of  severe  and  mild  climates  in  Europe, 
—  an  alternation  of  epochs  in  which  Britain 
was  inhabited  by  the  hippopotamus  with  epochs 
in  which  the  reindeer  roamed  to  the  south  of 
France.  And  this  is,  in  fact,  what  we  do  find. 
It  is  not  long  since  the  Glacial  period  in  Eu- 
rope was  supposed  to  have  been  one  long, 
monotonous  period  of  extreme  cold  ;  but  now 
the  foremost  geologists  —  such  as  Mr.  James 
Geikie,  who  has  more  than  any  one  else  illus- 
trated this  subject  —  have  discovered  at  least 
four  or  five  alternations  of  warm  and  cold  pe- 
riods in  Europe  during  the  Glacial  epoch  ;  and 
with  further  and  more  minute  research  we  may 
expect  the  agreement  between  observation  and 
deduction  to  become  still  more  convincing. 

Enough  has  now  been  said  to  give  the  reader 

some  idea  of  the  magnificent  line  of  reasoning 

by  which  Mr.  Croll  has  unfolded  the  causes  of 

the  Glacial  period.    And  it  also  becomes  appar- 

57 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ent  at  once  why  we  must  probably  select  the 
latest  period  of  high  eccentricity  in  the  earth's 
orbit  as  the  period  for  which  we  have  been  seek- 
ing. For  that  period  —  which  began  240,000 
years  ago,  and  terminated  80,000  years  ago  — 
presented  such  a  set  of  astronomical  circum- 
stances as  must  have  resulted  in  the  repeated 
glaciation  of  the  northern  hemisphere,  after  the 
manner  above  described.  And  the  antiquity 
of  that  period  seems  to  be  sufficiently  great  to 
allow  for  the  geological  changes  which  have 
occurred  since  the  Pleistocene  age.  If  we  were 
to  assign  an  earlier  epoch  of  high  eccentricity 
for  the  Glacial  period,  it  would  then  become 
necessary  to  show  why,  with  the  present  rela- 
tions of  land  and  sea  on  the  globe,  the  latest 
epoch  of  high  eccentricity  should  not  have  pro- 
duced a  subsequent  glacial  period.  But  the  Gla- 
cial period  which  Agassiz  first  taught  us  to  under- 
stand, and  which  in  recent  years  has  been  made 
the  subject  of  such  minute  study,  is  clearly  the 
latest  glacial  period  that  has  occurred  in  the 
northern  hemisphere ;  for  it  is  the  one  of  which 
the  traces  are  now  everywhere  around  us ;  it  is 
the  one  which  has  carved  the  mountains  of 
Scotland  and  New  England  in  their  present 
beautiful  outlines,  and  covered  their  sides  with 
boulders,  and  filled  the  valleys  with  romantic 
tarns  or  magnificent  lakes.  If  we  adopt  Mr. 
Croll's  theory  of  the  causes  of  glaciation,  we 

58 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

are  clearly  bound  to  look  to  the  latest  rather 
than  to  any  earlier  manifestation  of  those  causes, 
in  order  to  account  for  that  glacial  period  the 
effects  of  which  are  still  visible  all  around  us. 
Accordingly,  among  the  foremost  geologists 
who  have  adopted  Mr.  Croll's  conclusions, 
there  has  been  a  general  agreement  that  the 
period  of  high  eccentricity  which  began  240,000 
years  ago  and  ended  80,000  years  ago  must 
have  been  coincident  with  the  great  period  of 
glaciation  which  occurred  during  the  Pleisto- 
cene age  in  Europe  and  America. 

The  most  serious  objection  that  has  been 
urged  against  Mr.  Croll's  theory  is  that  it 
seems  to  require  us  to  suppose  that  there  have 
been  recurrent  glacial  epochs,  at  irregular  in- 
tervals, during  the  whole  past  duration  of  the 
earth's  history.  And  in  particular  it  would 
seem  to  be  implied  that  there  must  have  been 
a  great  glacial  period  from  880,000  to  700,000 
years  ago,  and  another  one  from  2,650,000  to 
2,450,000  years  ago,  both  of  these  dates  being 
long  subsequent  to  the  beginning  of  the  Ter- 
tiary period.  Mr.  Croll  has  sought  to  meet 
these  objections  by  showing  that  such  must 
really  have  been  the  case.  He  alleges  evidence 
of  glaciation  in  every  one  of  the  geological  pe- 
riods back  to  the  Cambrian,  with  the  single  ex- 
ception of  the  Triassic.  And  he  argues,  in  par- 
ticular, that  the  epoch  of  high  eccentricity  which 
59 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

began  880,000  years  ago  corresponded  with  a 
glacial  epoch  in  the  Miocene  period,  and  that 
in  like  manner  the  date  of  2,650,000  years  ago 
witnessed  the  beginning  of  a  great  glacial  epoch 
in  the  Eocene  period.  But  these  conclusions  are 
not  generally  adopted  by  geologists.  There  are 
some  evidences  of  local  glaciation  in  the  Miocene 
period  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Alps,  which 
were  probably  higher  then  than  they  are  at  pre- 
sent, but  the  weight  of  evidence  is  entirely  in  fa- 
vour of  the  conclusion  that  the  general  climate 
of  Europe  throughout  the  Eocene  and  Miocene 
periods  was  much  warmer  than  it  has  been  at 
any  later  date.  From  the  Eocene  period  down 
to  the  Pleistocene,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
there  was  a  slow  but  steady  lowering  of  the  mean 
temperature  of  Europe,  until  in  the  latter  period 
there  occurred  that  comparatively  rapid  refrig- 
eration which  brought  about  a  glacial  epoch. 
In  earlier  than  Tertiary  times,  on  the  other 
hand,  Mr.  Croll  seems  to  have  been  more  suc- 
cessful. There  are  distinct  and  numerous  evi- 
dences of  extensive  glaciation  in  Europe  dur- 
ing the  remote  Permian  period ;  and  it  is  not 
improbable  that  similar  phenomena  may  have 
taken  place  in  Silurian  times.  On  the  whole, 
however,  it  does  not  seem  likely  that  there 
have  been  many  periods  of  extreme  glaciation, 
like  that  which  we  suppose  to  have  ended  about 
80,000  years  ago ;  and  it  is  quite  unlikely  that 
60 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

there  has  been  any  other  such  period  since  the 
beginning  of  Tertiary  times.  How,  then,  shall 
we  explain  the  occurrence  of  two  periods  of 
high  eccentricity,  one  lasting  200,000  and  the 
other  1 80,000  years,  without  an  accompanying 
glaciation  of  the  northern  hemisphere  ? 

This  difficulty  has  been  sometimes  cited  as 
fatal  to  Mr.  Croll's  theory ;  but  when  we  fully 
consider  all  the  conditions  of  the  case,  we  shall 
see  that  it  is  not  so.  For  we  must  remember  that 
it  is  not  simply  the  cold,  but  it  is  the  snow  of  the 
glacial  winter,  that  chills  the  summers  and  ren- 
ders possible  the  accumulation  of  ice.  To  pro- 
duce a  glacial  epoch,  according  to  Mr.  Croll's 
theory,  it  is  not  enough  that  the  mean  winter 
temperature  of  the  northern  hemisphere  should 
be  lowered  35°  F.,  unless  there  is  enough  con- 
densation of  moisture  going  on  to  produce  an 
abundant  snowfall.  Under  such  geographical 
conditions  as  exist  to-day,  and  as  existed  during 
the  Pleistocene  period,  there  would  be  such  a 
condensation  and  such  a  snowfall ;  but  in  the 
Eocene  and  Miocene  periods  it  was  probably 
otherwise.  The  explanation  is  not  difficult. 

The  most  efficient  promoters  of  condensation 
are  mountains,  which,  thrusting  their  cold  sum- 
mits high  into  the  air,  precipitate  the  surround- 
ing moisture.  It  is  a  familiar  fact  that  mountain- 
ous districts  are  apt  to  be  rainy,  and  that  very 
high  mountains  are  usually  covered  with  snow 
61 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

in  midsummer,  even  while  oranges  and  palms 
are  flourishing  a  few  thousand  feet  below.  It  is 
not  quite  so  familiar  a  fact  that  no  intensity  of 
arctic  cold  will  suffice  to  prevent  a  warm  or  mild 
summer  unless  there  is  an  extensive  deposit  of 
snow  in  the  winter.  Now,  nowhere  on  the  earth 
do  we  find  any  lowlands  of  great  extent  covered 
with  perpetual  snow.  The  coldest  winters  on  the 
globe  occur  in  eastern  Siberia,  where  the  temper- 
ature often  averages  —  40°  F.  for  several  weeks 
in  succession,  and,  according  to  Professor  Pum- 
pelly,  sometimes  sinks  to — 120°  F. !  Yet  so 
dry  is  the  atmosphere  that  but  little  snow  falls, 
and  after  this  has  been  melted  in  the  spring  the 
weather  rapidly  grows  warm.  "  At  Yakutsk,  in 
62  degrees  N.  latitude,  the  thermometer  stands 
often  at  77°  in  the  shade,  and  wheat  and  rye  pro- 
duce from  fifteen  to  forty  fold,"  while  the  prairies 
are  covered  with  grass  and  flowers.  As  Mr.  Wal- 
lace observes,  "  it  is  only  where  there  are  lofty 
mountains  or  plateaus  —  as  in  Greenland,  Spitz- 
bergen,  and  Grinnell  Land  —  that  glaciers,  ac- 
companied by  perpetual  snow,  cover  the  country, 
and  descend  in  places  to  the  level  of  the  sea." 
The  coast  of  the  Antarctic  Continent  is  girded 
with  lofty  mountains,  which  effect  such  conden- 
sation in  the  damp  sea-air  about  them  that  the 
continent  is  buried  under  a  mass  of  ice  more  than 
a  mile  in  thickness.  The  antarctic  islands  South 
Georgia  and  South  Shetland  "  are  very  moun- 
62 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

tainous,  and  send  down  glaciers  into  the  sea ;  and 
as  they  are  exposed  to  moist  sea-air  on  every  side, 
the  precipitation,  almost  all  of  which  takes  the 
form  of  snow  even  in  summer,  is  of  course  un- 
usually large." 

In  order,  therefore,  to  get  a  centre  from  which 
to  start  an  accumulation  of  snow  and  ice  suffi- 
cient to  bring  on  a  glacial  epoch  in  the  northern 
hemisphere,  it  would  seem  absolutely  necessary 
that  there  should  be  a  considerable  amount  of 
high  land  within  the  Arctic  Circle.  But  in  the 
Eocene  and  Miocene  periods  this  condition 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  satisfied.  Through- 
out the  greater  part  of  these  two  periods  the  area 
within  the  Arctic  Circle  was  less  elevated  than  it 
has  been  ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  Pliocene 
age.  Greenland  stood  lower  than  at  present,  and 
the  greater  part  of  Siberia  was  submerged. 
Moreover,  as  already  stated  in  the  preceding 
paper,  the  continents  of  Europe  and  Asia  did 
not  become  "  united  into  one  unbroken  mass  " 
until  the  Pliocene  period.  In  the  earlier  Terti- 
ary times  the  warm  waters  of  the  Indian  Ocean 
flowed  northwestward  between  Asia  and  Europe 
even  into  the  Arctic  Ocean,  the  mountains  of 
Armenia  and  the  Caucasus  protruding  as  islands 
from  this  vast  sea  surface.  Again,  Mr.  Wallace 
has  pointed  out  a  number  of  peculiarities  in  the 
distribution  of  plants  and  animals  in  the  south- 
ern hemisphere  which  "  render  it  almost  certain" 

63 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

that  in  the  early  Tertiary  times  the  antarctic  land 
was  much  more  extensive  than  at  present.  Now 
an  elevation  in  the  antarctic  region,  increasing 
the  deposit  of  snow  and  ice  about  the  south 
pole,  and  thus  increasing  the  difference  of  tem- 
perature between  the  south  pole  and  the  equator, 
would  be  just  what  was  needed  to  convert  the 
fickle  monsoons  of  the  Indian  Ocean  into  a 
steady  and  powerful  trade-wind,  that  would 
drive  the  warm  water  northward  through  the 
channel  between  Europe  and  Asia,  even  as  far 
as  the  north  pole.  This  current  from  the  Indian 
Ocean  must  have  been  more  than  equal  to  the 
Gulf  Stream  in  heating  power,  and  its  effect 
would  be  to  prevent  any  accumulation  of  ice 
within  the  Arctic  Circle,  and  to  produce  in 
Greenland  such  a  climate  as  it  is  known  to  have 
enjoyed  in  the  Miocene  period,  when  it  was 
covered  with  a  vegetation  as  luxuriant  as  that 
of  Virginia  at  the  present  day. 

This  question  is  discussed  at  considerable 
length  and  with  great  ability  by  Mr.  Wallace, 
in  his  treatise  on  "  Island  Life."  His  argument 
is  in  some  respects  the  most  valuable  contribu- 
tion that  has  ever  been  made  to  our  understand- 
ing of  past  climatic  changes.  He  makes  it  per- 
fectly clear  that  while  Mr.  Croll's  astronomical 
interpretation  of  the  Glacial  period  is  perfectly 
correct  in  principle,  nevertheless  extensive  gla- 
ciation  cannot  take  place  unless  the  geographi- 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

cal  conditions  are  such  as  to  enable  a  great 
accumulation  of  ice  to  begin.  We  are  not,  there- 
fore, obliged,  on  Mr.  Croll's  view,  to  suppose 
that  every  epoch  of  high  eccentricity  has  inau- 
gurated a  glacial  period  ;  and  we  see,  in  particu- 
lar, why  such  a  result  was  not  likely  to  follow 
2,650,000  years  ago  or  800,000  years  ago,  sup- 
posing the  latter  date  to  have  occurred  before 
the  beginning  of  the  Pliocene  age ;  and  thus  the 
only  serious  objection  to  Mr.  Croll's  theory  is 
effectually  disposed  of. 

We  have  every  reason  to  believe,  then,  that 
the  great  Glacial  period  of  the  Pleistocene  age 
began  240,000  years  ago,  and  came  to  an  end 
80,000  years  ago.  But  at  the  beginning  of  this 
period  men  were  living  in  the  valley  of  the 
Thames ;  at  the  end  of  it  the  men  of  the  River- 
drift  had  probably  become  extinct,  and  their 
place  in  Europe  had  been  taken  and  held  for  ages 
by  the  boreal  Cave-men,  who  now  in  turn  were 
about  starting  on  their  long  retreat  to  the  arctic 
regions.  How  long  a  time  may  have  elapsed  be- 
fore the  swarthy  Iberian  settled  in  Europe,  with 
his  dogs  and  cattle,  we  have  no  means  of  decid- 
ing ;  nor  can  we  say  when  the  blue-eyed  Aryan 
began  his  invasions,  though  we  know  that  this 
last  event  must  have  been  very  recent,  —  not 
very  long  before  the  dawn  of  history.  Nor  can 
we  tell  how  long  there  had  been  human  beings  on 
the  earth  before  the  Glacial  epoch  began.  But, 
6* 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

as  I  have  said  already,  it  must  have  been  a  great 
while,  because,  even  before  the  close  of  the  Plio- 
cene age,  they  had  had  time  to  spread  over  the 
earth  as  far  as  Portugal  in  one  direction,  and  as 
far  as  California  in  the  other.  And  if  we  are  to 
take  the  date  of  240,000  years  ago  for  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Glacial  epoch,  we  can  hardly  allow 
for  the  close  of  the  Pliocene  age  an  antiquity  of 
less  than  400,000  years. 

It  only  remains  to  add  that  the  enormous 
length  of  time  during  which  the  human  race  has 
existed  is  of  itself  a  powerful  argument  in  favour 
of  the  opinion  —  now  generally  accepted  —  that 
the  human  race  was  originated,  by  a  slow  process 
of  development,  from  a  race  of  non-human  pri- 
mates, similar  to  the  anthropoid  apes.  We  see 
man  living  on  the  earth  for  perhaps  half  a  mil- 
lion years,  to  all  intents  and  purposes  dumb,  leav- 
ing none  but  a  geological  record  of  his  existence, 
progressing  with  infinite  slowness  and  difficulty, 
making  no  history.  Yet  his  geologic  record  is 
not  quite  like  that  of  the  dog  or  the  ape,  who 
could  not  chip  a  flint,  and  in  the  incised  antlers 
of  the  Cave-men  we  see  the  first  faint  gleams  of 
the  divine  intelligence  that  was  by  and  by  to 
shine  forth  with  the  glories  of  a  Michael  Angelo. 
We  cannot  but  suppose  that  during  those 
long  dumb  ages,  through  infinite  hardship  and 
through  the  stern  regimen  of  deadly  competi- 
tion and  natural  selection,  man  was  slowly  but 
66 


THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

surely  acquiring  that  intellectual  life  which  was 
at  last  to  bloom  forth  in  history,  and  which 
has  made  him  "  the  crown  and  glory  of  the 
universe." 

January,  188*. 


Ill 

OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

IN  the  beginning  of  the  Vendidad,  or  first 
of  the  Parsi  collection  of  sacred  books 
known  as  the  Zendavesta,  we  are  told  that 
the  supreme  deity  Ahura- Mazda  created  a 
country  full  of  delights,  but  difficult  of  access, 
and  the  name  of  this  country  was  Aryana  Vaejo. 
So  charming  was  this  primitive  country  that,  had 
it  not  been  made  difficult  of  approach,  the  whole 
animate  creation  would  have  flocked  thither  and 
quite  overwhelmed  it.  But  this  state  of  things 
did  not  long  continue  ;  for  Ahriman,  or  Anra- 
mainyus,  the  spirit  of  darkness,  was  the  impla- 
cable adversary  of  Ormuzd,  or  Ahura-Mazda, 
the  spirit  of  light,  and  took  pleasure  in  spoiling 
all  his  creations.  So  this  death-dealing  enemy, 
with  the  aid  of  his  daevas,  or  demons,  created 
a  great  serpent  and  brought  ten  months  of 
winter  cold  upon  the  land,  so  that  Aryana  Vaejo 
was  no  longer  a  comfortable  dwelling-place. 
The  good  spirit  then  created  a  new  home  for 
his  people,  called  Sugdha  ;  but  the  adversary 
spoiled  this  by  creating  a  kind  of  wasp  which 
devastated  the  fields  and  brought  death  to  the 
68 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

cattle.  Then  Ahura-Mazda  made  a  third  hab- 
itat, which  was  called  the  high  and  holy  Muru ; 
but  the  dark  demon  now  whispered  evil  reports 
and  stirred  up  strife,  until  here,  too,  life  became 
unendurable,  and  the  beautiful  land  of  Bakhdhi, 
or  Baktria,  was  created  as  a  fourth  home  for 
the  children  of  light.  So  the  warfare  went  on, 
until  no  less  than  sixteen  countries  are  enumer- 
ated as  successively  created  and  made  uncom- 
fortable. In  the  last  region  of  all  the  complaint 
is  again  of  cold  weather  and  hoar-frost ;  but 
perhaps  in  comparison  with  all  the  other  plagues 
this  now  seemed  endurable.  At  all  events,  the 
account  here  ends,  with  the  admission  that  there 
are  also  other  regions  and  places  besides  those 
described ;  as  much  as  to  say  that  we  are  not 
here  concerned  with  the  history  of  all  mankind, 
but  only  with  the  worshippers  of  Ahura-Mazda. 
The  book  from  which  this  legend  is  cited  is 
one  of  the  oldest  in  the  literature  of  the  world. 
It  belongs  to  a  more  primitive  age  than  the 
Homeric  poems,  and  may  probably  be  regarded 
as  contemporary  with  the  oldest  hymns  of  the 
Veda.  Written  not  in  the  court  language  of 
ancient  Persia,  but  in  the  closely  related  archaic 
dialect  of  Baktria,  —  very  much  as  the  ecclesias- 
tical services  of  Russia  to-day  are  written  in  Old 
Bulgarian,  —  the  Zendavesta  was,  in  the  time 
of  Darius  Hystaspes,  the  sacred  book  of  the 
most  prominent  nation  in  the  world.  For  eleven 
69 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

hundred  years  afterward  the  worship  of  Ahura- 
Mazda  retained  its  ascendency  in  the  countries 
between  Euphrates  and  the  Indus,  until  in  the 
seventh  century  after  Christ  this  whole  region 
was  overrun  by  Mohammedans,  and  converted 
to  their  faith.  For  a  long  time,  no  doubt,  the 
Magian  religion  continued  to  survive  alongside 
of  Islam,  as  we  see  from  the  frequent  allusions 
to  "  fire-worshippers  "  in  the  "Arabian  Nights," 
where  they  are  indeed  most  abominably  slan- 
dered. But  after  a  while  the  good  Ahura- 
Mazda,  yielding  to  this  last  and  gravest  mis- 
chief wrought  by  the  adversary,  devised  yet 
another  abode  for  the  remnant  of  his  people, 
and  led  them  to  Bombay  and  its  neighbourhood, 
where,  under  the  name  of  "  Parsis,"  or  "  Per- 
sians," they  still  keep  up  their  old  ceremonies 
and  their  old  faith. 

The  legend  of  the  sixteen  countries  created 
by  the  good  spirit  was  regarded  by  Bunsen  as  a 
historical  tradition  of  the  migrations  by  which 
the  ancestors  of  the  Indo-Persians  reached  the 
countries  where,  at  the  beginning  of  authentic 
history,  we  find  their  descendants.  But  it  will 
not  do  to  attach  too  much  historical  value  to 
legends  like  this.  For,  however  venerable  may 
be  the  record,  the  very  mist  of  antiquity  which 
shrouds  it  prevents  us  from  knowing  how  or 
whence  it  got  the  information  which  it  imparts. 
The  story  before  us,  indeed,  has  neither  the 
70 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

pretensions  nor  the  credentials  of  an  authentic 
historical  narrative.  It  relates  long-past  events 
as  ascertained  not  through  the  sifting  of  previ- 
ous human  testimony,  but  by  direct  revelation 
from  the  good  spirit  to  his  prophet  Zarathustra 
or  Zoroaster.  Nevertheless,  the  geographical 
succession  of  the  various  places  mentioned  in 
this  legend  is  very  suggestive.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  Aryana  Vaejo,  every  one  of  the  six- 
teen abodes  seems  to  be  described  by  a  genuine 
geographical  name,  though  two  or  three  have 
not  yet  been  satisfactorily  determined.  Thus 
Sugdha,  the  second  country,  is  what  the  ancients 
knew  as  Sogdiana;  Muru  appears  to  be  the 
modern  Merv,  or  Margiana ;  and  Baktria,  the 
next  in  order,  has  been  already  mentioned.  And 
so,  curiously  enough,  by  stringing  together  the 
whole  series  of  names,  there  is  indicated  a  con- 
tinuous migration  from  the  region  beyond  the 
Oxus,  at  first  southwesterly,  and  then  south- 
easterly, down  to  what  we  now  call  the  Punjab, 
or  "  country  of  five  rivers,"  but  which  in  the 
Vedic  hymns  is  somewhat  more  comprehen- 
sively termed  the  Sapta-Sindhavas,  or  "  Seven 
Rivers,"  and  which  in  our  Zend  legend  is  de- 
scribed in  identical  language  as  the  Hapta 
Hendu.  This  larger  designation  is  reached  by 
including,  along  with  the  five  rivers  of  the  Pun- 
jab, the  Sarasvati  and  the  Indus,  or  "  The 
River,"  'par  excellence.  Having  thus  reached 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  northwestern  confines  of  Hindustan,  in  the 
fifteenth  country  created  by  Ahura-Mazda,  the 
legend  here  informs  us  that  Anramainyus  de* 
vised  "  untimely  evils  and  unbearable  heat ;  " 
and  thereupon  we  are  abruptly  transported,  in 
the  sixteenth  region,  to  the  cool  neighbourhood 
of  the  Caspian  Sea,  perhaps  the  country  of  the 
Medes. 

Now,  however  difficult  it  may  be  to  accept 
such  an  account  as  properly  historical,  the  course 
of  migration  here  indicated  is  so  thoroughly  in 
accordance  with  all  that  we  know  of  the  relations 
between  the  peoples  of  the  Persian  Empire  and 
the  dominant  race  of  Hindus  in  India  that  it  is 
hard  not  to  grant  to  it  some  traditionary  value. 
It  would  appear,  at  least,  that  when  the  Vendi- 
dad  was  composed  the  worshippers  of  Ahura- 
Mazda  must  have  believed  that  their  ancestors 
came  from  somewhere  beyond  the  Oxus,  and 
travelled  in  the  direction  of  Hindustan,  until 
something  occurred  which  turned  them  west- 
ward again.  This  would  seem  to  be  the  only 
sound  meaning  that  can  be  extracted  from  the 
legend.  But  this  is  in  wonderful  accordance 
with  the  results  of  modern  critical  inquiry. 
From  a  minute  survey  of  the  languages  and 
legends  of  this  whole  region,  it  has  been  well 
established  that  the  dominant  race  in  ancient 
Persia  and  in  ancient  India  was  one  and  the 
same ;  that  it  approached  India  from  the  north- 
72 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

west ;  and  that  a  great  religious  schism  was  ac- 
companied by  the  westward  migration  of  a  large 
part  of  the  community,  while  the  other  part 
proceeded  onward,  and  established  itself  in  Hin- 
dustan. A  comparison  of  the  Zendavesta  with 
the  Veda  —  so  strongly  alike  as  they  are,  both 
in  thought  and  in  expression  —  shows  clearly 
that  the  occasion  of  this  schism  must  have  been 
the  promulgation  of  the  worship  of  Ahura- 
Mazda. 

In  illustration  of  this  community  of  origin 
between  the  Vedic  and  Zendavestan  peoples, 
Jet  us  refer  to  the  name  of  the  first  country 
which  the  supreme  deity  created,  —  the  name 
of  Aryana  Vaejo.  This,  as  already  hinted,  is 
not  a  geographical  name.  There  is  no  identifi- 
able locality  which  has  ever  been  called  Aryana 
Vaejo.  The  name  means  simply  "  the  start- 
ing-place of  the  Aryans."  In  later  Persian  my- 
thology, as  represented  in  the  Minokhired,  the 
name  came  to  stand  for  a  terrestrial  paradise, 
where  men  live  for  three  hundred  years,  without 
pain  or  sickness,  where  no  lies  are  told,  and 
where  ten  men  eat  of  one  loaf  and  grow  fat 
thereon.  In  the  Vendidad,  however,  Aryana 
Vaejo  is  simply  the  primeval  dwelling-place, 
whatever  it  may  have  been,  from  which  the 
Aryans  passed  into  Sogdiana.  Now  "  Aryan  " 
\vas  the  name  by  which  the  ancient  Persians  and 
(he  ancient  Hindus  alike  described  themselves. 
73 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

In  the  Vedic  hymns  the  dominant  people  of 
India  habitually  speak  of  themselves  as  Aryans, 
in  contrast  with  the  Dasyus,  or  inferior  races  of 
Hindustan,  whom  they  had  subdued.  Just  in 
the  same  way  Darius  Hystaspes,  in  the  inscrip- 
tion upon  his  tomb,  declares  himself  to  be  an 
Aryan,  of  Aryan  descent.  The  Medes  are 
always  called  Aryans  by  Armenian  writers  ;  and 
Herodotos  was  also  familiar  with  this  appella- 
tion. In  a  more  special  sense  the  countries  be- 
tween India  and  Persia,  now  known  as  Afghan- 
istan and  Cabul,  were  known  throughout  classic 
antiquity  as  Ariana.  Along  with  this  commu- 
nity of  name  there  was  close  community  of 
speech  among  these  peoples.  The  court  lan- 
guage of  the  Medes  and  Persians,  as  preserved 
in  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Darius,  the  Zend 
or  Baktrian  language,  in  which  the  sacred  books 
of  Zarathustra  are  written,  and  the  Sanskrit  of 
the  Vedic  hymns  are  as  clearly  dialects  of  the 
same  parental  language  as  French,  Spanish,  and 
Italian  are  dialects  of  Latin.  These  outline 
facts  are  all  that  we  need  for  the  present  to 
show  how  Aryan  was  the  common  name  for  a 
race  which,  advancing  from  the  north,  acquired 
supremacy  over  all  the  country  between  the 
Euphrates  and  the  mouth  of  the  Ganges. 
Whence  these  people  originally  came  it  would 
be  idle  to  inquire,  but  we  may  fairly  conclude 
that  they  first  attained  to  something  like  world- 
74 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

historic  importance  in  the  highlands  of  central 
Asia,  somewhere  about  the  sources  of  the  Oxus 
and  the  Jaxartes  ;  and  this  region  we  regard  as 
"Aryana  Vaejo,"  or  the  most  aboriginal  spot  to 
which  we  are  able  to  trace  the  Aryan  people. 

We  have  next  to  inquire  into  the  meaning  of 
the  word  Aryan ;  and  this  is  not  a  difficult  mat- 
ter, or  one  about  which  there  is  much  question. 
In  Sanskrit  the  word  aryay  with  a  short  initial 
a,  is  applied  to  cultivators  of  the  soil,  and  it 
would  seem  to  be  connected  etymologically  with 
the  Latin  arare  and  the  archaic  English  ear, "  to 
plow."  As  men  who  had  risen  to  an  agricul- 
tural stage  of  civilization,  the  Aryans  might  no 
doubt  fairly  contrast  themselves  with  their  no- 
madic Turanian  neighbours,  who  —  as  Huns, 
Tatars,  and  Turks  —  have  at  different  times  dis- 
turbed the  Indo-European  world.  But  for  the 
real  source  of  the  word,  as  applied  to  the  race, 
we  must  look  further.  This  word  arya,  "  a  cul- 
tivator of  the  soil,"  came  naturally  enough  in 
Sanskrit  to  mean  a  householder  or  land-owner, 
and  hence  it  is  not  strange  that  we  find  it  re- 
occurring,  with  a  long  initial  ay  as  an  adjective, 
meaning  "  noble  "  or  "  of  good  family."  As 
a  national  appellative,  whether  in  Sanskrit  or 
Zend,  this  initial  a  is  always  long,  and  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  Aryans  gave  themselves 
this  title  as  being  the  noble,  aristocratic,  or 
ruling  race,  in  contradistinction  to  the  aboriginal 
75 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

races  which  they  brought  into  servitude.  In  this 
sense  of  noble,  the  word  frequently  occurs  in 
the  composition  of  Persian  proper  names,  such 
as  Ariobarzanes,  Ariaramnes,  and  Ariarathes  ; 
just  as  in  old  English  we  have  the  equivalent 
word  ethely  or  noble,  in  such  names  as  Ethel- 
wolf  and  Ethelred.  As  an  ethnic  name,  there- 
fore, the  word  Aryan  seems  to  have  a  tinge  of 
patriotic  or  clannish  self-satisfaction  about  it. 
But  we  shall  find,  I  think,  that  such  a  shade  of 
meaning  has  been  more  than  justified  by  his- 
tory ;  for  we  have  now  reached  a  point  where  we 
may  profitably  enlarge  the  scope  of  our  discus- 
sion, and  show  how  the  term  Aryan  is  properly 
applicable,  not  merely  over  an  Indo-Persian,  but 
over  an  Indo-European  area,  comprehending 
the  most  dominant  races  known  to  history,  — 
the  Greeks  and  Romans,  Slavs  and  Teutons, 
with  the  highly  composite  English,  whose  lan- 
guage and  civilization  are  now  spreading  them- 
selves with  unexampled  rapidity  over  all  the 
hitherto  unoccupied  regions  of  the  earth,  which 
the  Vendidad  did  not  care  or  did  not  know  how 
to  specify.  In  order  to  explain  in  what  sense 
we  may  all  properly  be  called  Aryans,  we  must 
consider  for  a  moment  some  of  the  striking  re- 
sults which  have  been  obtained,  within  the  pre- 
sent century,  from  the  comparative  study  of 
languages. 

No  event  of  modern  times    has  exerted  a 

76 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

more  profound  and  manifold  influence  upon  the 
intellectual  culture  of  mankind  than  the  Eng- 
lish conquest  of  India.  The  enlargement  of  our 
mental  horizon  which  has  resulted  therefrom 
is  not  less  remarkable  than  that  which  attended 
the  revival  of  Greek  studies  in  the  fifteenth 
century.  It  is  not  simply  that  observation  of 
India  is  making  us  acquainted  with  an  enor- 
mous multitude  of  primitive  social,  linguistic, 
and  religious  phenomena  which  formerly  were 
hidden  from  our  notice.  In  contemplating  these 
phenomena,  we  have  become  possessed  of  a 
method  of  study  which  has  already  wrought 
such  wonders  as  to  vie  with  the  ointment  of 
the  Arabian  dervise,  that  enabled  its  owner  to 
detect  all  the  buried  treasures  of  the  earth.  This 
mighty  talisman  is  the  Comparative  Method, 
or  the  attempt  to  interpret  a  fact  by  comparing 
it  with  a  series  of  similar  facts,  which  different 
circumstances  have  caused  to  vary  in  different 
degrees.  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  mankind 
have  not  always  used  this  method  more  or  less, 
both  in  matters  of  science  and  in  matters  of 
every -day  life.  Nor  do  I  mean  to  claim  for 
modern  philology  any  exclusive  title  to  the 
honour  of  having  shown  what  can  be  done  by 
studying  phenomena  in  this  way.  I  do  not  for- 
get that  the  classification  of  living  and  extinct 
animals  by  Cuvier,  with  reference  to  palaeon- 
tological  epochs,  was  a  gigantic  act  of  compari- 
77 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

son,  which  first  made  it  possible  for  us  to  un- 
derstand the  past  history  of  life  on  our  globe. 
It  is  none  the  less  true  not  only  that  systematic 
employment  of  the  comparative  method  on  an 
extensive  scale  is  the  most  notable  philosophic 
achievement  of  the  nineteenth  century,  but  also 
that  its  first  great  triumph  was  the  establishment 
of  the  Aryan,  or  Indo-European,  family  of  lan- 
guages. This  triumph  was  prepared  by  the 
study  of  Sanskrit,  which  ensued  upon  the  Eng- 
lish conquest  of  India.  Previous  to  this,  indeed, 
the  close  resemblance  between  Greek  and  Latin 
had  been  often  enough  remarked,  and  theories 
had  been  entertained  concerning  a  primeval  kin- 
ship between  the  peoples  of  Greece  and  Italy. 
But  in  the  case  of  peoples  so  similar  in  aspect  and 
so  closely  connected  with  one  another  from  time 
immemorial,  this  similarity  of  speech  did  not 
provoke  much  curiosity.  It  was  quite  otherwise 
when  a  language  unmistakably  akin  to  Greek 
and  Latin,  both  in  grammar  and  vocabulary,  was 
discovered  in  such  an  out  of  the  way  country 
as  Hindustan,  and  among  a  people  who  had 
hitherto  been  generally  supposed  to  be  barba- 
rians. The  discovery  was  emphasized  by  the 
fact  that  no  such  obvious  resemblances  existed 
in  Hebrew,  a  language  much  nearer  geographi- 
cally and  historically,  and  from  which  there  had 
been  no  end  of  futile  attempts  to  derive  Latin 
and  Greek.  Further  interest  was  excited  when 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

it  became  known  that  this  newly  found  language 
contained  an  enormous  mass  of  literature  alleged 
to  be  the  oldest  in  the  world.  All  things  thus 
combined  to  stimulate  speculation  as  to  the  true 
character  of  the  relationship  between  Sanskrit 
and  the  languages  of  Greece  and  Rome.  This  re- 
lationship was  not  one  of  parentage.  It  has  been 
a  common  popular  error  to  suppose  that  Latin 
and  Greek  are  derived  from  Sanskrit ;  but  from 
the  first  no  such  view  was  countenanced  by  com- 
petent scholars.  About  1790,  Sir  William  Jones 
declared  his  opinion  that  the  three  languages 
were  sprung  from  "  some  common  source,  which 
perhaps  no  longer  exists."  Persian  also  he  was 
inclined  to  attribute  to  the  same  source,  and  he 
hinted  at  the  possibility  that  Gothic  and  Keltic 
might  be  included  in  the  group.  This  was 
coming  very  near  to  the  conception  of  an  Indo- 
European  family  of  languages.  But  that  concep- 
tion was  not  clearly  formed  until  nearly  twenty 
years  later,  and  then  it  was  reached  not  by  a 
great  philological  scholar,  but  by  a  poet  and 
literary  critic.  In  1 808,  Friedrich  Schlegel  main- 
tained that  the  languages  of  India,  Persia,  Greece, 
Italy,  and  Germany  were  connected  by  common 
descent  from  an  extinct  language,  just  as  the 
modern  Romanic  languages  are  connected  by 
common  descent  from  Latin  ;  and  for  the  whole 
family  he  proposed  the  name  Indo-Germanic. 
The  correctness  of  this  view  was  demonstrated 
79 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

by  Bopp,  in  his  "  Comparative  Grammar,"  pub- 
lished from  1833  to  1852,  in  which  the  Zend, 
Armenian,  Slavonic,  and  Lithuanian  languages 
also  were  added  to  the  group.  The  Keltic  lan- 
guages were  included  about  the  same  time,  and 
the  name  Indo-Germanic  was  extended  to  Indo- 
European.  Within  the  last  fifteen  years  — 
mainly  through  the  influence  of  Max  Miiller's 
writings  —  the  name  Aryan  has  come  into  gen- 
eral use  as  the  most  convenient  designation  of 
the  whole  family.  The  use  of  the  word  in  this 
extensive  sense  has  indeed  been  objected  to  by 
Professor  Whitney  and  others,  who  urge  that 
it  is  properly  applicable  only  to  the  Indo-Per- 
sian  branch  of  the  family ;  and  in  strictness 
their  argument  seems  to  be  sound  enough. 
There  is  no  evidence  that  any  of  the  European 
peoples  have  ever  called  themselves  Aryans,  and 
the  traces  of  the  name  which  Muller  has  sought 
to  point  out  in  Europe  are  very  scanty  and  ob- 
scure. According  to  Stephanus  of  Byzantium, 
Aria  was  an  old  name  for  Thrace,  and  among 
the  ancient  Germans  we  find  a  tribe  of  Arii  and 
such  proper  names  as  Ariovistus  ;  but  it  is  by 
no  means  'certain  that  these  names  are  in  any 
way  connected  with  the  original  Arya.  Nor  did 
Pictet  meet  with  any  better  success  in  his  at- 
tempt to  find  Arya  in  the  name  of  Erin  or  Ire- 
land, the  home  of  the  Eri,  or  Irish.  This  mod- 
ern name  is  a  contracted  form.  Its  root  in  old 
80 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

Keltic  seems  to  have  been  Iver,  which  is  the 
same  as  the  Sanskrit  avara,  "  western."  It  ap- 
pears in  the  Latin  Avernus,  a  famous  lake  on 
the  west  coast  of  Italy,  as  well  as  in  Iverniay  or 
Hibernia,  the  western  island.  This  old  word 
Iver  has  been  shortened  to  Ir  or  Er,  and  out 
of  this,  by  putting  on  their  own  terminations, 
the  English  have  made  Ire-land,  the  home  of 
the  Ir-ish,  or  "  Westerners."  But  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  we  find  no  certain  traces  of  the 
name  Aryan  in  the  European  languages,  I  be- 
lieve that  the  modern  use  of  the  word,  as  de- 
scriptive of  the  whole  family,  is  likely  to  prevail. 
It  is  a  much  less  cumbrous  term  than  "  Indo- 
European,"  and,  while  it  is  advantageously  free 
from  geographical  restrictions,  it  emphasizes,  at 
the  same  time,  the  fundamental  fact  that  the 
Aryana  Vaejo,  or  prehistoric  starting-point  of 
the  eastern  members  of  the  family,  was  also  the 
starting-point  of  the  western  members.  It  im- 
plies —  what  every  one  admits  to  be  true  —  that 
the  dominant  race  in  Europe  came  from  central 
Asia.  And,  still  further,  it  serves  admirably  as 
a  name  for  the  extinct  mother  tongue  from 
which  all  the  Indo-European  languages  have 
descended.  By  many  scholars  this  primitive 
tongue  is  itself  called  Indo-European  ;  but  I 
am  unable  to  see  any  propriety  in  giving  such 
a  name  to  a  language  which,  as  being  confess- 
edly spoken  north  of  the  Oxus  and  east  of  the 
81 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Caspian,  was  certainly  neither  Indian  nor  Eu- 
ropean in  any  sense.  It  seems  to  me  much  bet- 
ter, and  more  in  conformity  to  the  general  style 
of  philologists,  to  call  this  ancestral  language 
"  Old  Aryan,"  just  as  we  say  "  Old  Norse  " 
for  the  primitive  form  of  Danish,  Swedish,  and 
Norwegian. 

As  we  now  proceed  to  take  a  brief  survey  of 
the  Aryan  domain,  I  think  we  shall  realize  the 
advantage  of  having  a  word  that  is  independent 
of  geographical  limits.  The  Aryana  of  the  pre- 
sent day  is  much  more  than  an  Indo-European 
region.  Its  eastern  boundaries  have  altered  but 
little  for  many  centuries  ;  but  on  the  west  it  has 
extended  to  the  Pacific  coast  of  America,  and  on 
the  other  side  of  the  world  it  has  begun  to  annex 
territory  in  South  Africa  and  Australia.  Indeed, 
if  we  are  to  judge  from  what  has  been  going  on 
since  the  times  of  Drake  and  Frobisher,  it 
seems  in  every  way  likely  that  men  of  English 
speech  will  by  and  by  have  seized  upon  every 
part  of  the  earth's  surface  not  already  covered 
by  a  well-established  civilization,  and  will  have 
converted  them  all  into  Aryan  countries.  But 
our  linguistic  term  Aryan  is  independent  of  such 
changes.  Since  prehistoric  times  eight  principal 
divisions  of  Aryan  speech  have  existed,  but 
these  groups  of  languages  have  had  very  differ- 
ent careers,  and  some  of  them  are  rapidly  be- 
coming extinct.  The  first  great  separation  of 
82 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

Aryan  tribes  was  the  separation  between  the 
invaders  of  Indo-Persia  and  the  invaders  of 
Europe.  We  have  already  observed  how  the 
language  of  the  Indo-Persians  became  divided 
in  twain.  In  the  Indie  class  of  languages,  com- 
prising the  classical  Sanskrit,  the  Prakrit  of  later 
dramatic  writers,  the  Pali,  or  sacred  language  of 
the  Buddhists  in  Ceylon,  and  some  twenty  mod- 
ern dialects  spoken  chiefly  in  the  northern  half 
of  Hindustan,  we  have  the  first  grand  division  of 
Aryan  speech.  The  second  or  Iranic  class  com- 
prehends the  Zend,  the  ancient  Persian  of  the 
cuneiform  inscriptions,  the  Parsi  of  Bombay,  the 
Pushtu  of  Afghanistan,  modern  Persian,  Ar- 
menian, Kurdish,  and  the  Ossetian  spoken  in  the 
Caucasus.  Concerning  these  two  grand  divi- 
sions, we  need  only  observe  that  the  extremely 
close  resemblance  between  Sanskrit  and  Zend 
would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  separation  of 
the  two  occurred  at  a  comparatively  late  date, 
though  it  would  perhaps  be  difficult  to  suppose 
it  later  than  two  thousand  years  before  Christ. 
It  may  have  been  a  little  before  this  that  the 
western  tribes  of  Aryans  crossed  the  Volga  and 
began  the  conquest  of  Europe.  First  appear  to 
have  come  the  Kelts,  whose  languages  consti- 
tute the  third  great  division.  These  languages 
diverge  considerably  from  the  common  type, 
and  were  the  latest  to  be  recognized  as  Aryan 
in  character,  —  a  fact  which  is  quite  in  harmony 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

with  the  opinion  that  they  were  the  first  to 
branch  off  from  the  original  stock.  The  Kelts 
have  always  been  an  important  race,  but  their 
languages  have  not  thriven  in  the  world.  Keltic 
geographical  names  are  scattered  all  over  Eu- 
rope, and  in  the  eastern  part  such  words  as 
Dnieper,  Don,  and  Danube  testify  to  the  former 
presence  of  the  language  in  which  don  was  a 
common  name  for  water  or  river.  The  Kelts 
formed  a  large  part  of  the  populations  of  Spain 
and  northern  Italy,  and  a  principal  part  of  the 
populations  of  Gaul  and  Britain,  when  these 
countries  were  subjected  to  Roman  dominion ; 
and  as  late  as  the  Christian  era  they  were  to  be 
found  in  large  numbers  as  far  east  as  Bohemia. 
Since  then  they  have  been  partly  conquered 
and  partly  driven  westward  by  Romans  and 
Teutons,  without  ceasing  to  be  conspicuous  as 
a  race  ;  but  their  languages  have  sunk  into  com- 
parative obscurity,  and  are  fast  disappearing. 
The  Gauls,  who  showed  such  a  remarkable 
aptitude  for  taking  on  the  manners  of  their 
conquerors  that  by  the  fourth  century  their 
country  was  almost  as  thoroughly  Romanized 
as  Italy  itself,  forgot  their  own  language  with 
wonderful  ease.  It  was  so  completely  trampled 
out  by  Latin  that  very  scanty  vestiges  remain 
to  show  what  it  was,  if  we  except  geographical 
names.  At  the  present  day  two  groups  of  Keltic 
languages  remain :  the  Gaelic,  still  spoken  in 
84 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

Scotland,  Ireland,  and  the  Isle  of  Man ;  and 
the  Kymric,  or  old  British,  which  survives  in 
Welsh  and  in  the  dialect  of  Brittany.  A  third 
dialect  of  Kymric  was  formerly  spoken  in  Corn- 
wall, but  it  died  in  1770  with  Dame  Dolly 
Dentreath. 

Concerning  the  fourth  and  fifth  grand  divi- 
sions of  Aryan  speech  —  the  Italic  and  Hel- 
lenic —  but  little  need  be  said.  These  lan- 
guages are  too  illustrious  to  stand  in  need  of 
much  description.  The  relationship  between 
them  is  closer  than  in  the  case  of  any  other 
Aryan  languages  of  different  class,  save  the 
Zend  and  Sanskrit ;  and  this  close  resemblance 
justifies  the  inference  that  the  separation  be- 
tween Greeks  and  Italians  was  comparatively 
recent.  They  would  appear  to  have  entered 
Europe  somewhat  later  than  the  Kelts,  but 
everything  connected  with  their  prehistoric  ca- 
reer is  extremely  problematical.  To  the  Hel- 
lenic class  belong  only  two  languages,  —  the 
uncultivated  Albanian  and  the  Greek,  which 
was  stereotyped  so  early  and  so  thoroughly  by 
literary  culture  that  to  the  Athenian  schoolboy 
of  to-day  the  history  of  Herodotos  can  hardly 
seem  written  in  a  foreign  tongue.  To  the  Italic 
class  belong  the  ancient  Umbrian  and  Oscan 
and  the  Latin,  which  still  survives  under  the 
variously  modified  forms  of  Italian,  French, 
Proven9al,  Spanish,  Portuguese,  Rumansch,  and 

85 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Wallachian.  To  the  linguist  the  history  of  these 
Romanic  dialects  is  peculiarly  valuable,  as  illus- 
trating, with  the  aid  of  plentiful  documents,  a 
process  of  divergence  somewhat  similar  to  that 
which  previously  broke  up  the  Old  Aryan  into 
different  languages. 

The  Teutons,  whose  languages  form  our 
sixth  grand  division,  seem  to  have  entered  Eu- 
rope after  the  tribes  already  mentioned.  About 
Caesar's  time  we  find  Teutons  driving  Kelts  out 
of  Germany,  and  threatening  to  overrun  Gaul ; 
but  during  most  of  classic  antiquity  the  centre 
of  Teutonism  seems  to  have  been  farther  east 
than  Germany.  The  greater  part  of  what  is  now 
European  Turkey  was  occupied  by  Goths  in 
the  time  of  Herodotos,  and  for  eight  centuries 
afterwards.  The  ancient  Thracians  were  Goths, 
according  to  Grimm,  and  so  were  the  Getae. 
And  since  the  Christian  era  Teutonic  tribes  ap- 
peared in  what  is  now  southern  Russia.  The 
terrible  irruption  of  non-Aryan  Huns  from  Asia, 
in  the  fifth  century,  drove  these  tribes  westward, 
and  brought  them  into  collision  with  the  Empire. 
Of  the  Gothic  language  nothing  remains  save 
a  portion  of  a  translation  of  the  Bible,  made 
by  Ulfilas  in  the  fourth  century.  The  other 
branches  of  Teutonic  speech  —  Scandinavian, 
High  German,  and  Low  German,  of  which  our 
own  English  is  the  most  important  dialect  — 
are  too  well  known  to  require  comment. 
86 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

The  seventh  and  eighth  grand  divisions  of  Ar- 
yan language  are  the  closely  related  Lettic  and 
Slavonic.  The  Lettic  languages,  like  the  Keltic, 
are  fast  dying  out.  Of  Old  Prussian,  which  has 
been  dead  for  two  centuries,  nothing  is  now  left 
save  the  Catechism  of  Albert  of  Brandenburg. 
Lettish  and  Lithuanian,  of  which  the  latter  is 
remarkable  for  its  strong  resemblance  to  San- 
skrit, are  still  spoken  in  the  Baltic  provinces  of 
Russia. 

As  for  the  Slavs,  they  appear  in  history  north 
of  the  Black  Sea  about  the  time  of  Trajan,  and 
begin  to  be  frequently  mentioned  in  the  sixth 
century.  Since  then  they  have  pushed  westward 
far  into  the  Teutonic  domain,  but  have  nowhere, 
save  in  Russia,  retained  political  independence. 
Of  the  fifteen  or  more  Slavonic  languages,  the 
old  Bulgarian  and  the  modern  Russian,  Polish, 
Bohemian,  Croatian,  and  Serbian  are  of  most 
importance. 

Looking  thus  over  our  modern  linguistic  Ar- 
yana,  we  see  that  in  the  Old  World  it  pretty 
nearly  covers  the  geographical  area  included  be- 
tween the  Ganges  and  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 
Small  regions  of  non-Aryan  speech,  however, 
occur  here  and  there  within  this  area,  and  a  brief 
glance  at  these  will  serve  to  increase  the  definite- 
ness  of  our  knowledge. 

Wherever  n on- Aryan  languages  are  spoken 
within  this  Indo-European  domain,  it  is  for 
87 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

either  one  of  two  reasons.  Such  languages  are 
spoken  either  by  descendants  of  the  aboriginal 
tribes,  whom  the  invading  Aryans  overcame,  o- 
by  descendants  of  non- Aryan  invaders,  who  hav* 
pushed  in  at  a  later  date,  and  secured  for  them- 
selves a  lodgment  upon  Aryan  soil.  Of  the  first 
class  we  find  a  few  sporadic  instances.  The  lan- 
guage variously  called  the  Bask,  Euskarian,  or 
Iberian,  now  spoken  in  the  Asturias  and  about 
the  Pyrenees,  has  no  similarity  whatever  to  the 
Aryan  languages.  It  is  spoken  by  the  scanty 
remnant  of  a  people  who  in  immemorial  anti- 
quity seem  to  have  been  spread  all  over  western 
Europe,  but  who  were  for  the  most  part  con- 
quered and  absorbed  by  the  Keltic  van  of  the 
Aryan  invasion.  The  case  may  have  been  simi- 
lar with  the  lapygian  and  Etruskan,  which  were 
long  ago  trampled  out  in  Italy  by  the  Latin ; 
but  on  this  obscure  point  I  would  hardly  ven- 
ture an  opinion.  In  northern  Europe,  Finnish, 
Esthonian,  and  Lappish  are  still  spoken  by  races 
pushed  into  the  corner  by  Teutons  and  Slavs. 
A  perfect  Babel  of  aboriginal  dialects  still  exists 
in  the  inaccessible  fastnesses  of  the  Caucasus ; 
and  many  of  the  highlands  of  India  similarly 
shelter  primitive  non-Aryan  tribes,  whose  fore- 
fathers refused  to  submit  to  Brahmanic  oppres- 
sion. It  is  a  characteristic  of  such  remnants  of 
conquered  speech  to  subsist  only  in  out  of  the 
way  or  undesirable  corners.  On  the  other  hand, 
88 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

Turkish  and  Hungarian  are  foreign  tongues 
brought  into  the  Indo-European  area  by  recent 
intruders.  Both  these  languages  belong  to  the 
Altaic,  Turanian,  or  Tataric  family,  spoken  by 
nomadic  tribes  all  over  northern  Asia,  and  in-  \ 
eluding  in  Europe  the  Finnish  and  its  congeners 
above  mentioned.  The  Hungarian  has  especially 
strong  affinities  with  the  Finnish,  while  the  near- 
est relatives  to  Turkish  are  to  be  found  about 
Khiva  and  Bokhara,  in  the  Tataric  region  which 
Russia  is  so  rapidly  subjugating. 

We  have  now  arrived  at  a  tolerably  correct 
idea  of  what  is  meant  by  the  word  Aryan.  But 
one  important  point  must  not  be  overlooked. 
In  its  modern  sense  we  have  seen  that  the  word 
is  a  linguistic  term.  It  describes  community  of 
language.  As  we  now  use  the  word,  Aryans  are 
people  who  speak  Aryan,  or  Indo-European 
languages.  It  is  only  in  a  secondary  way  that 
this  word  can  be  used  as  an  ethnological  term, 
describing  community  of  race.  We  are  so  ac- 
customed to  consider  language  a  mark  of  race 
that  it  is  difficult  to  avoid  using  linguistic  epithets 
in  an  ethnological  sense,  and  a  good  deal  of  con- 
fused thinking  sometimes  results  from  this.  Wf 
have  above  alluded  to  the  Aryans  as  a  dominan' 
race,  which  long  since  overran  Europe  and  k 
now  spreading  over  America ;  yet  it  is  easy  to 
see  that  we  have  no  means  of  determining  how 
far  the  various  peoples  who  speak  Aryan  Ian- 
89 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

guages  are  of  common  descent.  It  is  never  safe 
to  use  language  as  a  direct  criterion  of  race,  for 
speech  and  blood  depend  on  different  sets  of 
circumstances,  which  do  not  always  vary  to- 
gether. We  of  the  English  race  have  much 
Keltic  blood  in  our  veins,  but  very  few  Keltisms 
in  our  speech ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  with  a 
vocabulary  nearly  half  made  up  of  Latin  words, 
we  have  either  no  Roman  blood  in  our  veins, 
or  so  little  as  not  to  be  worth  mentioning.  Dur- 
ing the  past  twenty-five  years  Frenchmen  have 
had  a  good  deal  to  say  about  the  "  Latin  race." 
There  could  hardly  be  a  more  flagrant  instance 
of  the  perversion  of  a  linguistic  name  to  ethnolo- 
gical purposes.  In  reality,  even  in  Caesar's  time, 
the  dominant  tribes  of  Latium  had  become  well- 
nigh  absorbed  in  the  non-Latin,  though  kindred, 
Italic  races  which  had  succumbed  to  them.  After 
Gaul  had  been  conquered,  it  learned  Roman 
manners,  but  without  receiving  any  very  large 
infusion  of  Roman  blood.  In  point  of  race  the 
French  are  Kelts,  with  a  considerable  substratum 
of  Iberian  and  superstratum  of  Teutonic  blood, 
—  the  former  chiefly  in  the  south,  the  latter 
chiefly  in  the  north.  Between  Frenchmen,  Span- 
iards, and  northern  Italians  there  is,  indeed,  a 
close  ethnic  affinity;  but  this  is  because  they 
are  all  to  a  great  extent  Kelts,  not  because  they 
have  all  learned  to  speak  dialects  of  Latin. 
Now  if  we  pursue  the  matter  a  little  farther, 
90 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

and  inquire  what  we  mean  by  saying  that  these 
three  peoples  are  in  great  part  Keltic,  we  shall 
find  that  a  similar  qualification  is  needed.  Ob- 
viously, we  mean  that  they  are  Keltic  in  so  far 
as  they  are  descended  from  people  who  formerly 
spoke  Keltic  languages.  Our  knowledge  of  the 
prehistoric  career  of  the  Kelts  is  too  small  to 
admit  of  our  meaning  more  than  this.  In  just 
the  same  way,  when  we  say  that  Spaniards  and 
Englishmen  and  Russians  are  akin  to  each  other 
as  being  Aryans,  we  can  only  mean  that  they 
are  in  great  part  descended  from  people  who 
spoke  Aryan  languages. 

There  can  be  little  doubt,  however,  that  all 
races  which  have  long  wandered  and  fought  have 
become  composite  to  a  degree  past  deciphering. 
And,  however  mixed  may  have  been  the  blood 
of  the  Aryan-speaking  invaders  of  Europe,  it 
remains  undeniable  that  the  possession  of  a  com- 
mon language  by  such  great  multitudes  of  peo- 
ple implies  a  very  long  period  of  time,  during 
which  their  careers  must  have  been  moulded  by 
circumstances  in  common.  It  implies  common 
habits  of  thought  and  a  common  civilization, 
such  as  it  was.  And  this  inference  is  fully  con- 
firmed by  a  comparative  study  of  the  myths  and 
superstitions,  as  well  as  of  the  primitive  legal 
ideas  and  social  customs  of  the  various  parts  of 
the  Indo-European  world.  For  this  reason  I 
think  we  are  justified  in  speaking  of  the  Aryan 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

race  just  as  we  speak,  without  error,  of  the  Eng- 
lish race,  though  we  know  that  many  race  ele- 
ments have  combined  their  energies  in  the  great 
work  of  English  civilization.  I  do  not  say, 
either,  that  we  may  not  fairly  speak  of  a  Latin 
race,  provided  we  bear  in  mind  the  limitations 
of  the  phrase ;  the  objection  is  not  so  much  to 
the  phrase  as  to  the  loose  way  in  which  it  is 
customarily  used  and  the  absurd  inferences 
which  are  often  grounded  on  it. 

The  ethnologist,  who  deals  with  skulls  and 
statures  and  complexions,  may  venture  much 
farther,  sometimes,  than  the  linguist,  —  though 
perhaps  the  greater  length  of  his  excursions  may 
not  always  compensate  for  their  comparative  in- 
security. It  is  quite  open  to  the  ethnologist  to 
hold  that  the  successive  Aryan  swarms  which 
colonized  Europe  were  like  each  other  in  phys- 
iological characteristics,  as  well  as  in  language 
and  general  culture.  Differences  of  complexion, 
when  well  marked,  are  among  the  most  conspic- 
uous differences  which  distinguish  individuals, 
groups,  or  races  from  one  another ;  and  they 
are,  moreover,  apt  to  be  correlated  with  deep- 
seated  physiological  differences  of  temperament. 
In  all  countries  peopled  by  Europeans  there 
are  to  be  found  two  contrasted  complexions,  the 
blonde  and  brunette  ;  endlessly  complicated  and 
varied  by  intermarriage,  but  nevertheless  in  their 
extreme  examples  so  strikingly  different  that  a 
92 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

stranger  might  well  be  excused  for  considering 
them  as  marks  of  difference  in  race.  In  popula- 
tions that  have  long  been  stationary  and  isolated 
from  foreign  intrusion  we  do  not  find  such  dif- 
ferences of  complexion.  We  do  not  find  them 
in  China  or  Japan,  or  among  the  Samoyeds,  or 
Kafirs,  or  Pacific  islanders,  or  among  the  Arabs. 
It  appears  to  be  only  among  the  Indo-European 
nations  that  they  occur  side  by  side  in  the  same 
community,  as  an  every-day  matter.  Now  we 
may  account  for  this  coexistence  and  intermin- 
gling of  contrasted  complexions  by  supposing 
that  the  various  peoples  of  Europe  have  arisen 
from  the  intermixing  in  various  proportions  of 
a  race  that  was  entirely  blonde  with  a  race  that 
was  entirely  brunette.  We  know  that  the  Bask 
or  Iberian  race,  which  once  seems  to  have  pos- 
sessed a  great  part  of  Europe,  was,  and  still  is, 
uniformly  dark  complexioned.  We  may,  ac- 
cordingly, suppose  that  the  Aryan-speaking  in- 
vaders were  uniformly  light.  The  effect  of  the 
earlier  invasions  of  Kelts,  Italians,  and  Greeks 
would  be  to  crowd  the  dark-skinned  Iberians 
into  the  three  southern  peninsulas,  into  western 
Gaul,  and  into  the  British  Isles.  The  next  step 
would  be  the  conquest  of  all  these  regions, 
followed  by  extensive  intermarriage  and  the 
general  adoption  of  Aryan  speech.  In  the  re- 
motest corner  of  all,  cooped  up  between  the 
Pyrenees  and  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  —  here,  if  any- 
93 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

where,  a  remnant  of  the  aboriginal  population 
might  preserve  its  purity  of  race  and  its  primi- 
tive speech.  As  a  result  of  these  proceedings, 
the  Aryan-speaking  peoples  of  Greece,  Italy, 
Spain,  Gaul,  and  Britain  would  show  a  mixture 
of  light  and  dark  complexions,  and  wherever  the 
invaders  had  been  much  less  numerous  than  the 
aborigines  the  brunettes  would  predominate. 
But  now,  where  the  later  swarms  of  Teutons 
and  Slavs  came  pouring  in,  the  case  would  have 
been  somewhat  altered  for  them.  Their  con- 
querings  and  interminglings  would  take  place 
not  with  a  pure-blooded  race  of  dark  aborigines, 
but  with  the  mixed  race  which  had  resulted  from 
the  foregoing  events.  One  consequence  would 
be  an  increased  percentage  of  fair  complexions 
in  western  countries  overrun  by  Teutons,  espe- 
cially in  England,  northern  France,  and  north- 
ern Italy.  Another  consequence  would  be  the 
partial  darkening  of  Teutons  and  Slavs  by  in- 
termixture with  Kelto-Iberian  predecessors  in 
southern  Germany  and  Austria.  Wherever,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  newcomers  were  left  pretty 
much  to  themselves,  as  in  northern  Germany, 
central  Russia,  and  Scandinavia,  we  should  find 
the  auburn  hair  and  blue  eyes  of  the  old  Aryan 
still  in  the  ascendant. 

This  very  ingenious  hypothesis,  which  is  de- 
fended by  such  a  cautious  ethnologist  as  Pro- 


94 


OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 

fessor  Huxley,1  accounts  remarkably  well  for  the 
actual  distribution  of  light  and  dark  complex- 
ions 2  throughout  Europe.  It  agrees  so  well 
with  the  facts  before  us  that  we  can  hardly  do 
better  than  adopt  it  as  a  provisional  explana- 
tion, subject  to  such  revision  and  amendment 
as  may  turn  out  to  be  necessary.  But  if  we 
thus  admit  the  existence  of  a  primitive  Aryan 
race  that  was  physically  homogeneous,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  we  admit  it  on  very  differ- 
ent grounds  from  those  on  which  were  based 
the  demonstration  of  a  primitive  homogeneous 
Aryan  language.  The  original  community  of 
language  is  a  point  on  which  we  have  reached 
absolute  certainty ;  the  community  of  race,  in 
any  other  sense  than  that  of  long-continued 
community  of  language  and  culture,  is  largely 
a  matter  of  speculation. 

Concerning  the  people  and  the  series  of  his- 
toric events  of  which  Aryana  Vaejo  was  the 

1  On  Some  Fixed  Points  in  British  Ethnology,  Critiques 
and  Addresses,  London,  1873,  pp.  167-180. 

2  We  may  go  still  farther  in  our  discrimination  between 
the  aboriginal  Iberians  and  the  invading  Aryans.    It  is  prob- 
able that,    along  with  black  hair,   black  eyes,  and  brunette 
skins,  the  Iberians  were  distinguished  by  short  stature,  slight 
and  compact  frames,  and  long  heads  ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  along  with  their  yellow  hair,  blue  eyes,  and  blonde 
skins,  the  Aryans  would  seem  to  have  been  distinguished  by 
tall  stature,  massive  frames,  and  broad  heads.    See  the  pre- 
ceding paper. 

95 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

legendary  starting-point,  we  have  thus  obtained 
much  interesting  and  trustworthy  information 
by  the  aid  of  the  comparative  method  of  in- 
quiry. For  be  it  observed  that  the  results  so 
far  set  down  have  been  reached,  for  the  most 
part,  by  a  mere  comparative  survey  of  the  va- 
rious regions  of  the  linguistic  and  ethnical  field 
with  which  we  have  been  called  upon  to  deal. 
We  have  in  this  way  obtained  quite  an  accurate 
conception  of  what  is  meant  when  we  speak  of 
the  Aryans.  But  as  yet  we  have  dealt  only  with 
the  veriest  rudiments  of  the  subject.  Nor  have 
we  as  yet  gone  far  toward  illustrating  the  vast 
and  rich  resources  of  the  comparative  method. 
To  be  able  to  depict  the  prehistoric  culture  of 
the  Aryan-speaking  people,  to  interpret  their 
mythical  conceptions,  and  to  unfold  the  other  re- 
markable truths  that  lie  latent  in  the  variety  of 
their  speech,  —  this  is  indeed  a  fruitful  achieve- 
ment. But  to  show  how  this  has  been  brought 
about  requires  a  separate  and  more  detailed 
form  of  exposition. 

July,  1876. 


96 


IV 


WHAT  WE   LEARN   FROM   OLD 
ARYAN   WORDS 

THE  discovery  of  the  Aryan  family  of 
languages,  as  elucidated  in  the  preced- 
ing paper,  was  the  first  and  most  con- 
spicuous consequence  of  the  zeal  for  Sanskrit 
studies  which  ensued  upon  the  English  con- 
quest of  India.  Surely,  this  in  itself  was  no 
small  thing.  It  was  in  every  way  stimulating 
and  suggestive  to  have  detected  a  specific  bond 
of  relationship,  in  speech  and  in  culture,  be- 
tween such  different  peoples  as  the  English  and 
the  Hindus,  who  had  not  previously  been  sus- 
pected of  possessing  anything  in  common  save 
their  common  humanity.  It  had  indeed  been 
long  ago  maintained  that  languages  the  most  di- 
verse in  superficial  aspect  were  descended  from 
a  common  source,  but  such  views  were  based 
merely  on  a  languid  assent  to  an  ill-understood 
tradition,  and  no  one  had  the  least  conception 
of  the  proper  method  of  tracing  linguistic  affin- 
ity. Down  to  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century  the  labours  of  etymologists  had  all  the 
crudeness  of  astrological  speculations,  or  of  bar- 
97 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

barian  theories  of  the  universe.  And  no  wonder, 
since  attention  had  been  chiefly  directed  toward 
Hebrew,  a  language  entirely  unrelated  to  those 
of  Europe,  so  that  any  attempt  to  explain  the 
latter  by  a  reference  to  the  former  could  end 
only  in  mental  confusion.  It  was  a  very  striking 
discovery  that  was  made  when  it  was  proved 
that  though  no  likeness  whatever  exists  be- 
tween the  European  tongues  and  Hebrew,  yet 
the  closest  similarity  is  manifest  between  these 
tongues  and  a  much  more  remote  Asiatic  lan- 
guage. The  completion  of  this  discovery  was 
no  less  striking  when  it  was  shown  that  while 
linguistic  relationship  can  be  clearly  traced,  ac- 
cording to  fixed  rules  of  inference,  among  all 
the  various  members  of  the  Indo-European 
group,  yet  the  moment  we  step  outside  of  this 
group  we  can  neither  detect  relationship  nor 
establish  rules  of  inference,  but  have  before  us 
a  new  set  of  facts,  quite  incongruous  with  the 
old  ones.  Such  a  contrast  was  just  what  was 
needed  in  order  to  indicate  what  the  true  signs 
of  linguistic  relationship  are,  and  thus  our  whole 
mental  horizon  was  shifted,  as  far  as  concerns 
the  study  of  language.  In  the  act  of  establish- 
ing the  existence  of  our  own  great  family  of 
speech,  scientific  methods  of  comparison  were 
gradually  worked  out,  and  the  results  of  this 
have  been  far-reaching  enough. 

In  the  present  paper  I  propose  briefly  to  no- 
98 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

tice  two  departments  of  study  which  have  been 
actually  created  by  the  comparative  investigation 
of  Aryan  languages.  Under  the  first  head  I  shall 
call  attention  to  some  characteristics  of  scientific 
etymology ;  under  the  second,  we  shall  get  a 
glimpse  of  the  prehistoric  culture  of  the  Aryans. 
First,  as  regards  etymology,  we  need  consider 
only  a  few  facts  which  show  how  systematic  and 
orderly  inference  has  been  substituted  for  what 
once  was  mere  random  guess-work.  In  compar- 
ing different  languages,  similarity  and  dissimilar- 
ity are  still,  as  formerly,  the  principal  tests  of 
relationship  ;  but  in  applying  these  tests  we  are 
strictly  limited  by  rules  which  formerly  were  ig- 
nored. Once  a  vague  resemblance  between  the 
vocabularies  of  two  languages  was  considered 
sufficient  ground  for  assigning  them  to  the  same 
class  ;  now  even  a  close  and  sustained  likeness  in 
vocabulary  is  not  enough,  unless  it  be  accom- 
panied by  likeness  in  grammatical  forms.  Thus, 
the  possession  of  innumerable  Latin  words,  such 
as  opinion,  reflect ',  admire ',  umbrella,  honour,  colour, 
contemplate,  criminal,  etc.,  does  not  make  Eng- 
lish a  language  of  the  Italic  class,  nor  does  it 
even  show  arty  original  kinship  between  English 
and  Latin.  Such  words  have  simply  been  adopted 
from  Latin,  just  as  ennui  and  naivete  have  been 
adopted  from  modern  French,  and  such  borrow- 
ing and  lending  as  this  can  go  on  between  any 
two  languages.  It  is  just  as  easy  for  us  to  use 

99 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Arabic  words  like  alcohol  and  cipher  as  if  Arabic 
were  a  kindred  language.  Nearly  half  the  vo- 
cabulary of  modern  Persian  has  in  this  way  come 
to  be  made  up  of  Arabic  words,  yet  there  is  no 
kinship  whatever  between  Persian  and  Arabic. 
But  while  mere  vocabulary  does  not  determine 
the  place  of  a  language,  the  peculiar  style  of  makr 
ing  sentences  does  determine  it.  Though  more 
than  half  the  words  we  use  are  Latin,  English  is 
not  an  Italic  language,  because  we  cannot  make 
a  single  sentence  out  of  Latin  materials  alone. 
English,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  Teutonic  lan- 
guage, because  we  cannot  make  a  single  sentence 
without  introducing  some  Teutonic  shibboleth. 
Suppose  we  say, "  Pantheism  desecrates  Deity  : " 
nere  we  seem  to  have  simply  one  Greek  word  fol- 
lowed by  two  Latin  words ;  but  the  Teutonic 
shibboleth  comes  out  in  the  terminal  s  of  "  dese- 
crates," which  is  the  peculiar  shape  in  which 
English  has  retained  the  old  Teutonic  verb-end- 
ing thy  as  it  would  appear  in  "  desecrateth." 
Again,  if  I  say, "  I  can  go  to  Boston,"  my  phra- 
seology is  purely  Teutonic  ;  but  if,  like  Dr. 
Johnson,  I  have  a  weakness  for  big  words,  and 
say,  "  It  is  possible  for  this  individual  to  traverse 
the  vast  area  intervening  between  this  locality  and 
Boston,"  I  have  not  yet  escaped  the  boundary  of 
Teutonic  speech ;  for  although  I  have  introduced 
seven  Latin  words  of  secondary  importance,  yet 
the  little  words  which  enable  me  to  knit  the  sen- 
100 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

tence  together  are  still  Teutonic,  as  before.  So 
when  we  say,  "  I  have,  thou  havest  or  hast,  he 
haveth,  hath,  or  has,"  the  Teutonic  shibboleth 
comes  out  in  this  style  of  inflection.  In  short,  it 
is  easy  enough  for  us  to  acquire  new  words,  but 
we  cannot  abandon  our  habits  of  sentence-mak- 
ing without  giving  up  our  language  altogether. 
Now  the  demonstrated  community  of  the  Aryan 
languages  rests  not  merely  on  their  possession  of 
a  common  vocabulary,  but  on  their  retention,  in 
various  degrees,  of  grammatical  forms  originally 
common  to  all.  We  can  hardly  find  a  better  in- 
stance than  in  the  conjugation  of  the  verb  just 
alluded  to:1  — 

"TO     HAVE." 

Gothic,  haba,  habai-s,  habai-th ;  haba-m,  habai-th,  haba-nd. 
Pen.  -m,  -d ;  -m,  -d,  -nd. 

Kelt.  -m,  -d ;          -m,  -d,          -t. 

Lith.  -mi,      -si,          -ti ;          -me,         -te,         -d. 

Slav.  -mi,      -si,          -ti ;          -mu,         -te,         -nd. 

Lat.  habeo,  habe-s,  habe-t  ;  habe-mus,  habe-tis,  habe-nt. 
Gr.  -mi,  -si,  -ti ;  -mes,  -te,  -nti. 

Str.  -mi,     -si,          -ti  ;  -masi,       -tha,        -nti. 

Community  of  vocabulary  is,  however,  a  very 
important  matter,  when  rightly  considered.   It  is 
true  that  any  language  may  borrow  a  large  pro- 
portion of  its  words  from  an  entirely  alien  source, 
as  Persian  has  borrowed  from  Arabic.     But  in 
comparing  the  various  forms  of  Aryan  speech  we 
1  Whitney,  Study  of  Language,  p.  1 99. 
101 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

have  found  a  criterion  which  enables  us  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  words  that  are  alike  in  two 
languages  because  one  has  borrowed  them  from 
the  other,  and  words  that  are  alike  because  they 
are  simply  modified  forms  of  the  same  aboriginal 
word.  This  supremely  important  point  can  be 
here  treated  but  roughly  ;  yet  I  hope  that,  with 
a  few  illustrations,  it  may  be  rendered  intelli- 
gible. 

One  of  the  chief  reasons  for  the  divergence  of 
a  language,  originally  uniform,  into  two  or  more 
distinct  dialects  is  to  be  found  in  those  differ- 
ences of  pronunciation  which  arise,  one  hardly 
knows  how,  in  different  localities.  The  most  cu- 
rious feature  of  these  differences  is  that  they  are 
often  so  extremely  systematic.  Every  one  has 
heard  of  the  Englishman  who  inquired,  "  If  a 
haitch  and  a  ho  and  a  har  and  a  hess  and  a  he 
don't  spell  'orse,  what  in  thunder  does  it  spell, 
you  know  ?  "  The  infallible  accuracy  with  which 
the  cockney  omits  his  h  where  it  belongs,  and 
supplies  it  where  it  does  not  belong,  has  always 
excited  my  wondering  admiration.  Were  there 
any  caprice  in  the  usage,  it  would  seem  less  mar- 
vellous. But  so  unerring  is  the  instinct  that 
when  a  friend  of  mine  once  purposely  spelled 
his  name  out  as  U-t-t-o-n  he  was  correctly  an- 
nounced by  the  waiter  as  Mr.  HUTTON  !  Is  not 
this  what  our  High  German  friends,  with  equal 
felicity,  and  in  illustration  of  a  similar  point, 

IO2 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

would  call  a  very  eggsdraortinary  zlr gums  dance  ? 
Yet  after  all,  so  far  from  being  extraordinary, 
such  phenomena  occur  so  regularly  in  a  com- 
parison of  the  Aryan  languages  that  they  have 
been  reduced  to  a  systematic  form  of  expression 
in  what  is  known  as  "  Grimm's  law."  Take, 
for  example,  the  word  "father."  This  is  the 
same  in  all  the  Aryan  languages,  save  for  the 
differences  in  pronunciation  which  make  the 
Germans  say  vafer,  while  in  Latin,  Greek,  and 
Sanskrit  we  have  pater.  On  the  other  hand, 
brother,  in  German  bruder,  appears  in  Latin  and 
Sanskrit  zsfrater  or  bhratar,  in  Greek  as  (frpdrrjp, 
the  member  of  a  brotherhood  or  fraternity.  That 
is,  where  we  pronounce  an/the  Greeks,  Romans, 
and  Hindus  pronounced  a^»,  but  where  we  pro- 
nounce a  b  they  pronounce  an  /,  or  something 
like  it.  Similarly,  where  we  say  gard-en  the  Greek 
said^o/3TO5  and  the  Latin  hort-us ;  and  our  goose, 
which  appears  more  fully  in  the  German  gans,  is 
found  in  Greek  as  xyv>  in  Sanskrit  as  hansa,  in 
Bohemian  as  bus,  the  name  of  the  celebrated 
martyr.  But  conversely,  where  we  say  heart  the 
Greek  said  KapS  and  the  old  Roman  cord,  and 
where  the  German  says  haupt  the  Roman  said 
caput.  That  is,  a  Teutonic  £  answers  to  a  Greek, 
Latin,  Sanskrit,  or  Slavonic  h>  but  a  Teutonic  h 
answers  to  a  k  in  the  latter  languages.  Now  this 
group  of  facts  is  not  precisely  analogous  to  the 
cockney's  transposition  of  his  aspirates,  but  it  is 
103 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

certainly  very  similar,  and  it  is  equally  myste- 
rious. Why  this  curious  alteration  of  sounds 
should  have  occurred  so  systematically,  and  on 
so  great  a  scale,  no  one  has  ever  succeeded  in  ex- 
plaining. It  is  none  the  less  to  the  purpose,  how- 
ever, that  it  has  occurred.  Although  an  empirical 
rule,  Grimm's  law  is  nevertheless  a  well-estab- 
lished rule,  and  in  the  study  of  Aryan  etymology 
it  has  to  be  taken  into  account  at  every  step.  It 
is  easy  to  see  what  a  revolution  the  establishment 
of  this  law  has  worked  in  our  methods  of  com- 
paring words.  Formerly  the  etymologist  looked, 
though  in  a  vague,  indiscriminate  way,  for  mere 
resemblances ;  and  this  was  natural  enough.  But 
now  a  too  strict  resemblance  sometimes  becomes 
a  suspicious  circumstance.  The  Greek  word  for 
"  whole  "  is  0X0?,  and  what  could  be  more  plausi- 
ble than  to  suppose  it  identical  with  the  English 
word  ?  But  here  Grimm's  law  makes  us  suspi- 
cious. We  ought  not  to  expect  a  Greek  to  pro- 
nounce "  whole  "  like  an  Englishman,  any  more 
than  we  ought  to  expect  to  hear  a  cockney  say 
"horse."  What  the  cockney  says  is  "orse," 
and  what  the  Greek  would  naturally  say  is  not 
oXos,  but  /coXos  ;  and  in  point  of  fact  it  has  been 
otherwise  proved  that  our  suspicion  is  here  well 
grounded,  —  the  resemblance  between  the  Eng- 
lish and  Greek  words  is  purely  accidental.  Mere 
resemblance  is  thus  a  very  treacherous  guide  in 
etymology.  In  French  we  have  louer, "  to  hire," 
104 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

and  louer,  "to  praise."  Some  philological 
dreamer  tried  to  show  that  these  words  might 
be  connected,  because  you  praise  your  lodgings 
or  horses  when  you  wish  to  induce  some  one  to 
hire  them !  In  fact,  the  one  word  has  been 
clipped  down  from  Latin  locare,  "  to  hire,"  and 
the  other  from  Latin  laudare,  "to  praise."  In 
striking  contrast  to  this,  let  us  observe  how  two 
English  words,  pen  and  feather,  are  closely  con- 
nected in  origin,  in  spite  of  their  entire  dissimi- 
larity. There  was  an  Old  Aryan  verb  paf,  "  to 
fly,"  which  still  appears  in  the  Greek  7rero/w,cu. 
There  were  also  such  suffixes  as  tra  and  na,  de- 
noting the  instrument  with  which  an  act  is  ac- 
complished. Pat-tra  thus  meant  "  a  wing,"  and 
a  Hindu  might  perhaps  thus  understand  it ;  but 
in  Gothic  we  find  fath-thra,  and  in  English 
feather,  just  as  Grimm's  law  has  taught  us  to 
expect.  Pat-na  had  the  same  meaning,  and 
passed  into  old  Latin  zspes-na,  which  later  Latin 
clipped  down  to  penna,  a  wing  or  feather,  and 
finally  the  quill-feather  with  which  you  write. 
In  these  days  we  have  applied  the  word  to  little 
implements  of  gold  or  steel  which  have  nothing 
to  do  with  flying,  unless  the  soaring  of  Peg- 
asus be  supposed  to  keep  up  the  association  of 
ideas. 

This  example  of  pen  and  feather  is  a  very 
trite  one,  but  I  have  cited  it  because  it  further 
illustrates  a  very  important  point,  toward  which 
105 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  argument  has  been  for  some  time  tending. 
Looking  at  these  two  words,  with  reference  to 
the  whole  extant  Aryan  vocabulary,  we  find  that 
their  very  forms  disclose  their  past  history. 
We  see  that  the  word  feather >  which  has  under- 
gone the  change  of  pronunciation  indicated  in 
Grimm's  law,  in  common  with  Teutonic  words 
in  general,  is  a  genuine  Teutonic  word,  and 
appears  in  the  English  language  to-day  because 
it  has  always  belonged  to  English  speech.  But 
the  word  /><?»,  which  has  not  undergone  this 
change,  shows  thus  on  its  very  face  that  it  has 
not  grown  up  in  company  with  Teutonic  words, 
but  has  been  adopted  at  a  recent  date  from  an- 
other branch  of  the  Aryan  family.  The  changes 
formulated  in  Grimm's  law  took  place  in  early 
times,  long  before  people  had  begun  to  think 
critically  about  their  pronunciation  or  their  dic- 
tion. When  we  adopt  Latin  words  in  modern 
times,  we  do  not  refashion  them  in  accordance 
with  the  twisted  pronunciation  of  our  barbaric 
ancestors,  but  we  take  them  as  they  are.  From 
•pater  we  takepaterna/,  without  trying  to  make 
it  sound  like  its  equivalent,  fatherly.  Thus  we 
arrive  at  a  safe  criterion  for  distinguishing  be- 
tween words  which  have  been  passed  about  from 
one  Aryan  language  to  another,  in  the  course 
of  recent  intercommunication  of  culture,  and 
words  which  have  descended,  with  divers  modifi- 
cations, from  a  common  original.  Words  of  the 
1 06 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

latter  sort,  where  they  exist  in  different  classes 
of  Aryan  speech,  have  obviously  been  handed 
down  from  primeval  times ;  they  must  have 
formed  part  of  the  vocabulary  employed  in  Ar- 
yana  Vaejo,  and  the  most  convincing  proof  of 
their  genuineness  is  to  be  found  in  the  peculiar 
nature  of  the  wear  and  tear  they  have  under- 
gone. To  recur  to  an  example  previously  cited, 
the  existence  of  such  English  words  as  colour, 
opinion,  admire,  etc.,  not  only  fails  to  prove  kin- 
ship between  English  and  Latin,  but  it  does 
not  even  prove  that  English  is  an  Aryan  lan- 
guage, since  these  words  are  manifest  importa- 
tions, and  the  case  of  Persian  and  Arabic  shows 
that  nothing  is  easier  than  for  one  language  to 
adopt  half  its  current  words  from  another  that 
has  no  relationship  with  it.  But  on  the  other 
hand,  when  we  compare  such  words  as  corn  with 
Lat.  granum  ;  horn  with  Lat.  cornu  ;  who  and 
what  with  Lat.  quis  and  quid,  Skr.  kas  and  kad ; 
queen  with  Gr.  yvvrj ;  beech  with  Lat.  fagus  ; 
doom  with  Gr.  #e/us ;  tear  with  Skr.  dar ;  bear 
with  Skr.  bhar,  Gr.  and  Lat./<?r0;  tooth  (Goth. 
tunthus]  with  Zend  and  Skr.  dant,  Lat.  dens,  — 
when  we  find  a  thousand  such  cases  of  syste- 
matic divergence,  we  get  clear  proof  of  the 
original  identity  of  the  English  vocabulary  with 
the  others  brought  into  the  comparison.  For 
the  divergences  in  themselves  are  incompatible 
with  any  theory  of  modern  borrowing  and  lend- 
107 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ing,  while  the  extreme  regularity  of  their  recur- 
rence is  explicable  only  as  the  result  of  common 
processes  operating  on  common  materials. 

The  symmetry  of  consonant-changes  through- 
out the  Aryan  languages  is  at  first  sight  a  won- 
derful phenomenon,  and  the  tracing  of  corre- 
lated words  in  accordance  with  such  laws  as 
Grimm's  never  ceases  to  be  a  fascinating  study. 
The  laws  of  vowel-change  —  whereby,  for  ex- 
ample, the  Skr.  matar  corresponds  to  Lat. 
mater,  Gr.  (jLTJrrjp,  Gaelic  mat hair ,  Germ.  mut- 
ter, and  Kng.  mother  —  are  hardly  less  interest- 
ing. But  to  do  justice  to  such  a  subject  as 
etymology  would  require  much  more  time  than 
we  have  at  our  disposal.  In  the  present  paper 
I  have  not  attempted  to  make  anything  like  a 
full  statement  even  of  Grimm's  law,  but  have 
given  only  such  scanty  illustrations  as  may 
serve  to  render  the  outline  of  the  argument 
intelligible  while  I  go  on  to  point  out  one  of 
the  largest  of  the  results  that  have  come  from 
this  minute  study  of  consonants  and  vowels. 
From  this  minute  study  the  laws  of  the  permu- 
tation of  words  have  been  wrought  into  such  a 
complete  and  harmonious  system  that  it  has 
become  possible  to  reconstruct  large  portions  of 
the  common  Aryan  mother  tongue  by  compar- 
ing together  the  curiously  modified  forms  of 
its  modern  descendants.  The  problem  is  quite 
similar  to  what  it  would  be  if  classical  Latin  were 
108 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

extinct,  and  we  were  required  to  reproduce  as 
much  as  possible  of  it  from  an  elaborate  com- 
parison of  the  vocabularies  and  grammatical 
forms  of  French,  Spanish,  Italian,  and  their 
allied  modern  dialects.  Such  a  task  would  no 
doubt  be  delicate  and  difficult ;  but  there  is  also 
no  doubt  that  a  great  deal  of  good  Latin  could 
be  reconstructed  in  this  way.  The  restoration 
of  the  Aryan  mother  tongue  seems  at  first  sight 
a  still  more  formidable  task ;  but  it  is  a  task  for 
which  we  have  also  more  abundant  materials 
in  the  wider  variation  among  Aryan  words  as 
compared  with  Romanic  words.  Thus  by  a  com- 
parison of  French  mois  with  Span,  mes  and  Ital. 
mese,  knowing  besides  the  general  habits  of  the 
Romanic  languages,  we  might  probably  infer 
the  Lat.  mensis  as  the  common  original  of  the 
three ;  but  on  looking  over  the  whole  Aryan 
field,  and  comparing  Lat.  mensis  with  English 
month,  Gr.  IJLTJV,  Lith.  menesis,  O.  H.  G.  manot, 
and  Skr.  masa,  we  arrive  with  even  stronger 
probability  at  the  Old  Aryan  mansa  as  the  only 
form  which  could  have  given  rise  to  all  these. 

During  the  last  twenty  years  it  may  almost 
be  said  that  the  great  work  of  Aryan  philology 
has  been  the  reconstruction  of  the  Old  Aryan 
mother  tongue.  At  least  the  comparative  re- 
searches that  have  been  made  have  owed  their 
chief  interest  to  their  bearing  on  this  problem. 
In  philology,  as  in  zoology  and  botany,  ques- 
109 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

tions  of  classification  have  become  irretrievably 
implicated  with  questions  of  genealogical  kin- 
ship. Whether  we  are  considering  consonants 
and  vowels,  or  the  case-endings  of  nouns,  or 
the  syntax  of  moods  and  tenses,  it  is  impossible 
to  describe  accurately  the  relations  of  the  several 
Aryan  languages  to  one  another  without  involv- 
ing a  perpetual  reference  to  the  common  origi- 
nal from  which  these  languages  sprang.  The 
first  noteworthy  attempts  at  reconstructing  the 
mother  tongue  were  made  by  the  great  philo- 
logist August  Schleicher,  who  by  way  of  giving 
a  popular  illustration  of  his  abstruse  results 
once  wrote  a  little  fable  in  Old  Aryan.  This 
jeu  tf  esprit  of  Schleicher's  has  been  so  often 
alluded  to  that  I  am  tempted  to  quote  it  here, 
with  an  English  translation.  To  any  classical 
scholar,  who  has  also  a  slight  acquaintance  with 
Sanskrit  and  Gothic,  the  sense  must  shine  so 
clearly  through  the  Old  Aryan  words  that  the 
translation  will  hardly  be  needed. 

Avis  akvasas  ka. 

Avis,  yasmin  varna  na  a  ast,  dadarka  akvams, 
tarn,  vagham  garum  vaghantam,  tarn,  bharam 
magham,  tarn,  manum  aku  bharantam.  Avis 
akvabhyams  a  vavakat :  kard  aghnutai  mai  vi- 
danti  manum  akvams  agantam. 

Akvasas    a    vavakant :    krudhi    avai,    kard 
aghnutai  vividvant-svas :   manus  patis  varnam 
no 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

avisams  karnauti  svabhyam  gharmam  vastram 
avibhyams  ka  varna  na  asti. 

Tat  kukruvants  avis  agram  a  bhugat.1 

The  Sheep  and  the  Horses. 

A  sheep,  whose  wool  had  been  shorn,  looked 
upon  the  horses  as  they  drew  a  heavy  wagon, 
bore  a  great  load,  or  swiftly  carried  a  man. 
The  sheep  said  to  the  horses,  "It  grieves  my 
heart  to  see  Man  driving  horses." 

The  horses  said,  "  Listen,  sheep ;  it  grieves 
our  hearts  to  think  how  the  despot  Man  makes 
his  warm  garment  of  sheep's  wool,  while  the 
sheep  goes  woolless." 

On  hearing  this,  the  sheep  quit  the  field. 

In  the  simple  diction  of  this  little  apologue, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  we  have  a  very  close 
approach  to  the  words  that  our  Aryan  fore- 
fathers would  have  understood  in  the  days  be- 
fore they  had  as  yet  invaded  Europe  and  mixed 
with  the  swart  Iberian,  whom  —  physically 
though  not  linguistically  —  we  also  reckon  as 
our  ancestor.  But  with  respect  to  such  attempts 
at  reproducing  the  Aryan  mother  tongue  in  its 
concrete  reality,  there  is  one  thing  which  we 
must  always  bear  in  mind.  Granting  that  a 
word  A  and  a  word  B  both  existed  in  Old 

1  Kuhn  and  Schleicher,  Beitrage  zur  vergleichenden 
Sprachforschung,  v.  207. 

Ill 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Aryan,  in  the  time  of  the  Spracheinhcit,  we  do 
not  know  but  A  may  have  become  obsolete 
before  B  came  into  general  use.  So  that,  if  we 
were  to  try  to  write  out  a  long  story  after  Schlei- 
cher's  example,  though  each  individual  word 
might  be  correctly  reproduced,  we  should  run 
great  risk  of  writing  an  Old  Aryan  style  as 
anomalous  as  would  be  the  style  of  a  writer  of 
hypothetical  English  who  should  mix  up  in  one 
and  the  same  sentence  the  diction  of  Chaucer, 
of  Dryden,  and  of  Longfellow.  It  is  difficult, 
at  present,  to  see  how  chronological  considera- 
tions can  be  applied  to  the  vocabulary  of  Old 
Aryan,  in  the  absence  of  that  kind  of  historic 
evidence  which  written  records  or  inscriptions 
alone  can  furnish.  In  the  last  resort,  compara- 
tive philology  is  an  historical  science.  Though 
it  can,  within  a  limited  range,  perform  wonder- 
ful feats  of  inference,  quite  comparable  with 
such  as  are  achieved  by  the  physical  sciences, 
yet  after  all,  the  tether  by  which  it  may  stray 
from  its  historic  base  is  not  a  long  one.  The 
science  of  language  must  always  be  studied 
mainly  by  the  help  of  documentary  evidence. 

Yet  while  this  chronological  difficulty  would 
seem  to  render  hopeless  the  accurate  restitu- 
tion of  the  Aryan  mother  tongue  as  a  whole, 
we  can  none  the  less  restore  or  reconstruct  in- 
dividual Old  Aryan  words  with  a  fair  approach 
to  accuracy.  And  a  very  extensive  Old  Aryan 

112 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

vocabulary  has  already  been  thus  obtained,  as 
we  may  see  in  the  three  goodly  octavos  of  Kick's 
great  dictionary,  in  which  a  primitive  Aryan 
warrior  —  if  we  could  first  resuscitate  him  and 
then  teach  him  to  read  —  would  no  doubt  find 
himself  more  or  less  at  home.1 

In  no  respect  do  these  philological  inquiries 
appear  more  interesting  than  in  the  light  which 
they  throw  upon  the  prehistoric  civilization  of 
our  Aryan-speaking  forefathers.  No  historic 
record,  not  even  a  vague  tradition,  is  preserved 
of  the  time  when  the  blue-eyed  ancestors  of 
Kelt,  Greek,  Roman,  and  Teuton  dwelt  in  a 
single  community  with  the  ancestors  of  Persian 
and  Hindu.  We  have  no  clue  even  to  the  date 
of  this  epoch  of  common  Aryanism,  though  we 
may  very  fairly  allow  for  it  perhaps  three  or 
four  thousand  years  before  the  Christian  era. 
Even  the  oldest  Aryan  legends,  as  those  of  the 
Vendidad,  preserve  only  a  dim  reference  to  a 
time  when  the  Indo-Persian  branch  of  the 
family  had  not  yet  become  divided.  Yet  con- 
cerning the  degree  of  culture  reached  in  those 
remote  times,  so  far  antedating  all  conscious 
historic  tradition,  the  unconscious  record  of 
language  has  given  us  some  trustworthy  infor- 
mation. From  the  seemingly  dry  study  of  con- 
sonants and  vowels  an  easy  process  of  inference 

1  Pick,  Vergkichendes  Worterbuch  der  Indogermanischen 
Sprachen.  3d  edition,  Goettingen,  1874-76.  3  vols.  8vo. 

"3 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

opens  up  to  us,  as  with  a  magician's  wand,  a 
fascinating  picture  of  the  life  and  pursuits  and 
habits  of  thought  of  the  people  from  whose 
long-perished  form  of  speech  our  vowels  and 
consonants  are  derived. 

Wonderful  as  this  may  seem,  what  is  simpler, 
when  we  have  once  ascertained  that  a  certain 
word  belonged  to  the  Old  Aryan  language,  than 
the  inference  that  the  word  was  used  to  describe 
some  object  or  express  some  thought?  And 
where  the  meaning  of  the  word  has  remained 
uniform  throughout  all  the  vicissitudes  of  pro- 
nunciation and  inflection  to  which  it  has  been 
subjected,  what  better  guarantee  do  we  need  that 
the  word  was  used  with  the  same  meaning  in 
the  mother  tongue  ?  It  requires  no  extraordi- 
nary insight,  when  one  has  mastered  the  rules 
of  comparative  grammar,  to  see  that  the  primi- 
tive Aryan  called  his  nearest  relatives  by  the 
names  patar,  matar,  bhratar,  svasar,  sunu,  and 
dhugatar  ;  or  that  when  he  learned  to  count  up 
to  ten  he  said  something  like  aina,  dva,  tri,  kat- 
varypankan,  ksvaksy  sap  (an,  aktan,  navan,  dakan. 

Proceeding  in  this  way,  we  find  abundant 
evidence  that  the  early  Aryans  had  outgrown 
the  nomad  stage  of  civilization  and  acquired 
settled  habitations,  not  merely  in  villages,  but 
even  in  fortified  towns.  The  Lat.  domus  reap- 
pears, with  hardly  any  change,  in  Gr.  So/uos, 
Skr.  dama,  Armen.  do  km,  Irish  daimh,  and  Russ. 
114 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

)  always  with  the  meaning  of  "  house."  In 
the  Teutonic  class  we  do  not  find  this  word  in 
precisely  the  same  sense;  but  we  have  the 
Germ,  zimmer,  "  a  room,"  connected  with  Goth. 
timrjan,  "  to  build,"  and  Eng.  timber p,or  "  build- 
ing material  ;  "  and  these  words,  compared  with 
Gr.  Scpeiv,  carry  us  back  to  Old  Aryan  dam, 
"  to  build,"  so  that  the  domus  of  our  forefathers 
was  not  a  mere  hole  in  the  rocks,  but  a  dwell- 
ing-place put  together  by  the  art  of  the  carpen- 
ter. In  Greek  the  more  common  word  for 
house  is  ol/cos,  originally  Fot/co?,  "  a  place  that 
one  goes  into."  This  word  runs  through  all 
the  Aryan  languages,  but  the  original  sense  of 
"  entering  "  is  forgotten,  and  it  only  means  "  a 
place  where  one  lives,"  —  sometimes  a  house, 
but  more  generally  a  village.  Thus  we  have 
Skr.  ve$a,  Zend  vif,  Russ.  vest  and  Polish  wtes, 
Lat.  vicus  (whence  the  diminutive  vicula,  villa, 
village) ,  Irish  fich^  Kymric  gwic,  Goth.  weihs> 
Eng.  wick.  The  Old  Norse  language  shows  a 
curious  deviation  from  this  general  agreement 
in  meaning ;  for  whereas  the  word  generally 
describes  an  abode  on  the  land,  to  the  sea-rov- 
ing Norseman  a  wick  was  a  creek  or  sheltered 
bay  serving  as  a  station  for  ships,  and  hence 
their  famous  name  of  Vikings  or  "  men  of  the 
fjord."  So,  while  the  ending  wick  or  wich  is 
very  common  in  old  English  names  of  inland 
towns,  it  occurs  frequently  also  on  the  British 
"5 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

coasts  in  the  Norse  sense,  as  in  Sandwich  and 
Berwick,  favourite  stations  for  pirates.  But  with 
this  characteristic  divergence,  the  generally  uni- 
form significance  of  the  word,  in  languages  so 
widely  scattered,  points  clearly  to  the  existence 
of  village  communities  among  the  prehistoric 
Aryans.  The  various  forms  of  the  English  word 
town  are  equally  instructive,  though  not  quite 
so  numerous.  The  Old  English  form  tun  has 
its  counterpart  in  Old  German  zun,  "  an  in- 
closed or  fortified  place,"  with  which  the  mod- 
ern German  zaun,  "  a  hedge,"  is  connected. 
Now,  in  accordance  with  Grimm's  law,  we  find 
Armenian  dun,  "  a  house,"  Kymric  din,  "  a  for- 
tress," Irish  dun,  a  "  fortress  "  or  "  camp  "  or 
"  walled  town."  This  Keltic  form  appears  in 
many  geographical  names,  such  as  Thun,  in 
Switzerland ;  Lug-dun-um  on  the  Rhone,  now 
Lyons ;  Lug-dun-um  in  Holland,  now  Leyden ; 
Dun-keld,  the  "  fort  of  the  Kelts  ;  "  Dumbarton, 
the  "  fort  of  the  Britons ; "  Dundee,  London, 
Clarendon,  etc.  In  the  remote  Himalayas  the 
same  word  reoccurs  in  the  names  of  hill  for- 
tresses, such  as  Kjarda  Dhun,  Dehra  Dhun,  etc. ; 
and  again  it  is  a  fair  inference  that  where  a  word 
turns  up  in  so  many  parts  of  the  Aryan  domain 
with  the  very  same  determinations  of  meaning, 
it  must  have  belonged  to  the  primitive  vocabu- 
lary of  the  race.  So  that  our  forefathers  would 
appear  to  have  been  acquainted  not  only  with 
116 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

houses  and  villages,  but  also  with  some  kind  of 
walled  towns. 

The  name  of  the  rampart  with  which  such 
fortified  inclosures  were  surrounded  was  also 
contained  in  the  Old  Aryan  vocabulary.  From 
the  old  root  val  or  var,  to  "  protect  "  or  "  sur- 
round," we  have  Skr.  varana,  Old  Germ,  wari, 
Pol.  warowniay  Lat.  vallum,  Lith.  wolas,  Irish 
fat,  Kymric  gwaly  Eng.  wall.  The  partition 
wall  of  a  house,  on  the  other  hand,  is  more 
properly  described  by  a  root  which  in  Sanskrit 
seems  to  be  applied  to  wicker-work,  but  which 
in  the  European  tongues  appears,  with  hardly 
any  variation  either  in  sound  or  sense,  as  Lat. 
murusy  Lith.  murasy  Old  Germ.  muray  modern 
Germ,  mauer,  Irish,  Kymric,  Old  Eng.,  and 
Pol.  mur.  The  name  for  "  roof "  is  similarly 
ubiquitous  :  in  Skr.  we  have  sthagy  "  to  cover," 
in  Lith.  stogasy "  a  roof,"  in  Gr.  o-reyo?,  a  "roof" 
or  "  house,"  and  crrcyeu,  "  to  cover  ;  "  but  the 
word  appears  about  as  often  in  Greek  as  reyo?, 
with  the  initial  letter  dropped  ;  and  so  in  Irish 
we  find  teg,  "  a  house,"  in  Lat.  tego  and  tectum, 
in  Old  Eng.  thecany  in  Eng.  deck  and  thatch. 
In  door  there  has  been  even  less  variation  than 
this  :  Skr.  has  dvary  and  also  dur  in  the  Vedas  ; 
Zend  dvara,  Pers.  dary  Gr.  Bvpay  O.  H.  G.  turay 
Goth.  daury  Old  Eng.  duruy  Irish  and  Welsh 
dor;  the  Lithuanian  has  lost  the  singular,  but 
retains  the  plural  durrys  for  folding-doors.  The 
117 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

word  meant  originally  "  that  which  obstructs  or 
keeps  out."  Another  old  name  for  the  door, 
which  appears  in  Skr.  as  arara,  has  been  pre- 
served in  Europe  only  in  the  Irish  or  air  y  a 
"  porch "  or  "  vestibule,"  and  Welsh  oriel. 
This  latter  is  one  of  the  very  few  Keltic  words 
to  be  found  in  English,  where  it  has  become 
the  name  of  a  kind  of  bay-window. 

Among  the  Aryan  words  for  "  window " 
there  is  no  such  identity,  though  there  is  a  most 
curious  similarity  in  the  metaphors  by  which 
they  have  been  constructed.  In  Sanskrit  the 
window  is  grhaksha,  or  "  the  eye  of  the  house," 
and  a  big  round  window  is  called  gavaksha,  a 
compound  of  gauy "  cow,"  and  akshay  "  eye," 
which  is  about  equivalent  to  our  expression 
"  bull's-eye."  The  Slavonic  languages  have  oknoy 
from  okoy  "  an  eye,"  while  Gothic  has  augadauro 
and  O.  H.  G.  augatora,  or  "eye-door."  The 
meaning  of  our  English  word  is  not  so  immedi- 
ately apparent,  but  in  one  of  our  nearest  rela- 
tives, the  Danish,  it  occurs  as  vindue,  and  in  Old 
Norse  this  was  vindauga^  that  is,  "  an  eye  or 
hole  for  the  wind  to  blow  through."  These 
coincidences  are  interesting  as  showing  how 
easily  and  naturally  the  same  association  of  ideas 
may  occur  to  different  people,  for  these  words 
have  been  independently  formed.  Whether  we 
are  entitled  to  infer  from  this  that  the  Aryan 
mother  tongue  had  no  word  for  window,  and 
118 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

that  therefore  the  people  who  spoke  it  lighted 
and  aired  their  houses  only  through  the  door- 
way, it  is  not  easy  to  decide.  It  is  very  unsafe 
to  rest  a  conclusion  upon  negative  evidence. 
The  old  Aryans  certainly  might  have  had  a 
name  for  window  which  among  various  tribes 
came  to  be  supplanted  by  various  other  expres- 
sions. Accordingly  we  can  only  say  that,  while 
we  are  perfectly  sure  that  they  had  doors,  it  is 
quite  uncertain,  so  far  as  philology  goes,  whether 
they  had  windows  or  not.  And  in  general, 
while  the  occurrence  of  the  same  indigenous  name 
for  any  object,  throughout  the  different  classes  of 
Indo-European  speech,  is  sufficient  proof  that 
the  primitive  Aryans  knew  and  named  the  ob- 
ject, on  the  other  hand,  the  non-existence  of 
such  a  common  name  raises  only  a  negative 
presumption,  which  we  have  seldom  any  further 
means  for  testing. 

The  ancient  Aryan  gained  a  livelihood  chiefly 
from  rearing  cattle  and  tilling  the  ground.  The 
names  of  our  principal  domestic  animals  are 
found  in  all  parts  of  the  Indo-European  terri- 
tory. The  various  Teutonic  terms,  cow,  kuy 
chuoy  reappear  with  the  proper  change  of  guttural 
in  Lettish  gows,  Pers.  g&w,  Armen.  gov,  Zend 
gao  zndgava,  Skr.gaus,gava,  zndgu.  A  peculiar 
twist,  by  which  a  labial  was  pronounced,  instead 
of  an  original  guttural,  may  be  observed  quite 
frequently  in  the  Graeco-Roman  and  Keltic  lan- 
119 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

guages,  and  here  we  have  Gr.  £ovs,  Lat.  bos> 
Irish  bo,  and  Welsh  bu.  The  meaning  of  the 
word  has  been  variously  explained,  but,  as  we 
have  beside  it  the  Skr.  gu,  Gr.  yocteo  and  )8oaw, 
Lat.  boaoy  to  "  bellow,"  it  is  most  likely  an  im- 
itative sound,  like  our  moo  and  mooley.  In  the 
dialect  of  the  Vedas  a  bull  is  called  vaksha^  in 
later  Skr.  and  Zend  uksha ;  in  Gothic  this  ap- 
pears as  auhsa,  and  in  Old  Eng.  as  oxay  whence 
our  ox.  Sthira^  again,  is  a  Skr.  name  for  bull, 
meaning  the  "  powerful  "  animal.  In  Zend 
tfaora  means  a  strong  beast  of  burden  ;  in  Eng- 
lish we  have  kept  the  full  word  sfeer,  but  the 
initial  s  has  generally  been  dropped,  so  that  we 
have  Dan.  tyr,  Gr.  and  Lat.  taurusy  Russ.  turu, 
Irish  tor.  The  word  bull  itself  is  descriptive  of 
the  strength  of  the  animal,  and  appears  in  Skr. 
baling  Irish  bulan,  Lith.  bullus,  and  in  many 
other  languages.  There  are  a  great  many  other 
Aryan  names  for  these  animals,  but  without 
spending  time  on  them  we  may  note  that  several 
of  the  words  just  cited  have  been  borrowed  by 
non-Aryan  languages,  such  as  those  of  the 
Finno-Tataric  class,  and  even  the  Japanese  and 
Chinese ;  from  which  it  would  seem  probable 
either  that  the  primitive  Aryans  were  the  first 
to  domesticate  cattle,  or  at  least  that  they  were 
very  preeminent  as  a  pastoral  race,  and  furnished 
to  their  neighbours  great  numbers  of  these  most 
useful  animals.  The  prominence  of  the  cow 
1 20 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

in  early  Aryan  thought  is  shown  both  by  the 
multitude  of  synonyms  for  the  creature,  and  by 
the  frequency  of  similes,  metaphors,  and  myths 
in  the  Vedic  hymns  in  which  the  cow  plays  a 
part.  In  those  days,  moreover,  which  were 
before  the  days'  of  "  soft  "  or  "  hard  "  money 
wealth  was  reckoned  in  cows,  and  cows  were  the 
circulating  medium,  with  sheep  and  pigs  for 
small  change.  Every  one  knows  that  Lat.  pe- 
cunia  is  derived  from  pecus,  "  a  herd ;  "  the 
same  is  true  of pecu!ittmy  "a  man's  private  pro- 
perty," from  which  we  have  obtained  peculiarity, 
or  "  that  which  especially  pertains  to  an  indi- 
vidual." Pecus,  Lith.  pekus,  Skr.  and  Zend 
pa^u,  "  the  animal  that  is  tied  or  penned  up," 
reappears  with  the  regular  change  in  Goth.faihuy 
Old  Eng.feoh,  modern  Germ.  Vieh ;  in  modern 
English  the  word  has  become /<?<?,  a  "  pecuniary 
reward."  In  Irish  we  have  bosluaiged^  "  riches," 
from  bosluagy  "  a  herd  of  cows."  When  you  go 
to  a  tavern  to  dine  you  pay  your  shot  or  scot 
before  leaving  ;  or  you  sometimes,  perhaps,  get 
into  a  very  ticklish  situation,  and  still  escape 
scot-free.  In  Old  Eng.  sceat  was  "  money,"  and 
the  Old  Norse  skattr  and  Goth,  skatts  had  the 
same  meaning ;  but  the  Irish  scath  means  "  a 
herd,"  and  Old  Bulgarian  skotu  was  one  of  the 
many  Aryan  words  for  cow.  Another  of  these 
words  in  Skr.  is  rupa,  whence  are  derived  rupya, 
"  money,"  and  the  modern  rupee  of  Bengal. 
121 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

More  than  a  hundred  different  names  for  the 
horse  have  been  counted  in  Sanskrit,  but  most 
of  these  are  comparatively  modern  in  origin. 
The  only  one  we  need  notice  is  a$va,  from  an 
Old  Aryan  akva,  meaning  "  the  swift."  In 
Lith.  the  same  word  aszwa  is  the  name  of  the 
mare  only,  but  the  Lat.  equus  preserves  the  old 
meaning.  The  classic  Greek  ITTTTOS  does  not 
sound  so  much  like  equus  as  one  might  expect, 
but  we  find  the  requisite  transitions  in  the 
Aiolic  IKKOS  and  Old  Aiolic  t*Fos-  In  Irish 
nothing  is  left  but  the  first  syllable,  ech.  In 
Gothic  the  word  reappears  quite  regularly  as 
aihva,  and  in  Old  Eng.  this  is  clipped  down 
into  eoh.  Modern  English,  however,  and  the 
other  Teutonic  languages  have  lost  this  word 
and  replaced  it  by  another,  which  goes  back 
to  the  times  of  Teutonic  unity,  but  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  known  to  the  primitive 
Aryans.  The  Old  High  Germans  and  the 
Norsemen  pronounced  this  word  hross,  but  the 
oldest  Teutonic  form  was  probably  horsa,  from 
a  root  hor^  identical  with  Lat.  currere, "  to  run." 
Horse  is  accordingly  connected  by  bonds  of 
etymological  kinship  with  its  descriptive  syn- 
onym courser.  Modern  High  German,  in  turn, 
though  it  has  not  lost  the  word  ross,  has  adopted 
a  new  name,  pferd,  which  is  in  more  frequent 
use,  and  the  history  of  which  is  extremely 
curious. 

122 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

One  of  the  few  Keltic  words  which  the  Roman 
conquerors  adopted  from  their  Gaulish  subjects 
was  the  word  rheda,  used  to  describe  a  light  four- 
wheeled  carriage.  Such  carriages  were  used  for 
posting,  and  the  light,  swift  animal  which  drew 
them  received  a  special  name,  made  by  com- 
pounding the  root  of  veho>  to  "  draw "  or 
"  carry,"  with  the  name  of  this  kind  of  carriage. 
Thus  arose  the  word  veredus,  "  the  drawer  of  the 
rheda"  the  post-horse,  or  courier's  horse  ;  and 
so  veredarius  was  a  post-classic  Latin  word  for 
"  courier  ;  "  but  the  name  veredus  was  not  long 
in  becoming  generalized,  for  in  Martial  we  find 
it  used  for  a  light,  fleet  hunting  horse.  At  the 
same  time  there  came  into  general  use  the  curi- 
ously hybrid  word  paraveredus,  made  by  pre- 
fixing the  Greek  preposition  ira/aa,  meaning 
"  beyond,"  to  veredus,  to  denote  an  extra  post- 
horse  for  extraordinary  occasions.  This  mon- 
grel word  paraveredus,  thus  oddly  made  up  out 
of  Greek,  Latin,  and  Keltic  elements,  seems  to 
have  been  a  favourite  name  for  the  horse  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  In  Ducange's  great  dictionary  of 
mediaeval  Latin  we  find  parvaredus,  parafredus, 
and  palafredus,  along  with  many  other  forms. 
From  palafredus  came  the  French  palefroi  and 
the  English  palfrey  ;  while  the  simple  contraction 
and  abbreviation  of  the  older  paraveredus  re- 
sulted in  the  form  pferd  adopted  by  the  modern 
German. 

123 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

As  the  Teutonic  languages  have  thus  adopted 
new  words  to  designate  the  horse,  so  the  modern 
Romanic  languages  have  generally  forgotten 
equus  and  substituted  for  it  the  name  which 
appears  in  French  as  cheval  and  in  Italian  as 
cabalky  and  from  which  we  have  obtained  such 
words  as  cavalry,  chevalier,  and  chivalry.  An- 
cient Greek  and  Latin  both  had  this  word  ca- 
ballusy  which,  as  kobyla,  is  the  common  name 
for  a  horse  in  the  Slavonic  languages,  and  ap- 
pears also  in  Irish  as  capall  and  in  Welsh  as 
ceffyl.  We  do  not  find  any  such  name  in  San- 
skrit, but  in  the  Kawi  of  the  island  of  Java, 
which  is  a  non- Aryan  Malay  language,  as  full 
of  Sanskrit  words  as  English  is  of  Latin  words, 
we  find  the  horse  called  capalay  and  side  by  side 
with  this  we  have  in  Sanskrit  the  adjective 
qapalay  "swift."  The  Sanskrit  quite  generally 
corrupted  Old  Aryan  ^-sounds  in  this  way,  as 
we  corrupt  Latin  sounds  in  English  when  we 
say  serebrum  and  Sisero  instead  of  kerebrum  and 
Kikero ;  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  in  this  word 
for  "  swift  "  we  have  the  explanation  of  caballus. 
Curiously  enough,  the  modern  Greek  has  also 
dropped  the  classical  name  for  the  fleet-footed 
beast,  and  substituted  aXoyov,  which  means 
"  unreasoning,"  and  in  former  times  was  applied 
to  brutes  in  general.  It  is  quite  remarkable 
that  there  should  have  been  such  vicissitudes 
in  the  career  of  the  words  which  describe  so 
124 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

familiar  an  animal,  and  we  need  no  better  illus- 
tration to  convince  us  of  the  danger,  above 
pointed  out,  of  relying  too  confidently  upon 
negative  evidence  in  such  inquiries  as  we  are 
here  making.  Looking  at  the  contemporary 
names  only,  we  find  the  English  and  French  say- 
ing horse  and  chevaly  "  the  swift  runner,"  while 
High  German  and  Greek  szypferd,  "  the  extra 
drawer  of  a  post-carriage,"  and  aXoyov,  "the 
brute,"  —  names  quite  distinct  both  in  sound 
and  in  meaning.  If  all  the  other  forms  had  been 
lost  and  replaced  by  new  words,  —  as  might 
easily  be  the  case  where  there  are  so  many  syn- 
onyms for  the  same  object,  —  we  might  perhaps 
have  inferred  that  there  was  no  common  Aryan 
name  for  the  horse,  and  that  hence  the  animal 
was  not  known  until  after  the  separation  of 
Aryan  tribes  had  begun  ;  but  this  would  have 
been  very  plainly  a  mistake. 

Besides  the  horse  and  cow,  the  primitive  Ar- 
yans had  domesticated  sheep,  goats,  and  pigs,  as 
well  as  dogs.  With  regard  to  the  cat,  the  case  is 
less  clear.  That  wild  species  of  the  cat  family 
were  known  seems  probable,  and  the  word  puss 
has  some  claim  to  an  Old  Aryan  pedigree,  for 
we  find  pushak  in  modern  Persian,  -puiz'e  in 
Lithuanian,  pusag  and  puss  in  Irish,  whence  we 
have  adopted  the  word  ;  but  whether  the  primi- 
tive form  of  these  names  was  applied  to  a  wild 
or  to  a  domesticated  cat  is  uncertain.  With  this 
125 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

exception,  the  Indo-European  names  are  all 
different.  In  Latin  we  have  felis,  in  Greek 
cuAovpos  ;  but  we  know  otherwise  that  the 
Greeks  and  Romans  had  no  domestic  cats,  but 
kept  a  kind  of  weasel  to  destroy  their  rats  and 
mice.  In  our  own  and  most  other  modern  Euro- 
pean languages  the  principal  name  of  the  animal 
is  borrowed  from  Latin ;  but  the  Latin  catus  is 
itself  an  imported  word  from  a  non-Aryan 
source.  It  is  the  Syriac  kato,  Arabic  kitt,  indi- 
cating that  the  cat  was  introduced  into  Europe 
from  the  Levant,  at  a  comparatively  recent 
period. 

But  whether  the  Old  Aryans  had  domestic 
cats  or  not,  they  certainly  needed  them,  for  the 
word  mouse  occurs,  with  hardly  any  variation, 
in  nearly  all  the  Indo-European  languages.  In 
Latin,  Greek,  Old  Norse,  Old  German,  and 
Old  English  it  is  mtis ;  in  Russian  we  have 
myshi,  in  Bohemian  mysh,  in  Persian  mush,  in 
Sanskrit  mushay  the  "pilfering  creature,"  the 
"  little  thief." 

Flies  are  also  to  be  numbered  among  the 
household  pests  of  Aryana  Vaejo  ;  the  old  name 
was  makshi,  the  "  buzzing  creature,"  and  is  pre- 
served in  Zend  and  the  modern  Indian  lan- 
guages. In  Europe  we  have  Lith.  musse,  Bohem. 
musska,  Lat.  musca,  O.  H.  G.  muccha,  Swed.  and 
Old  Eng.  mygge,  Eng.  midge,  of  which  the  di- 
minutive midget,  or  "  little  fly,"  has  been  applied 
126 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

as  a  caressing  epithet  to  children.  The  meaning 
of  the  more  common  Teutonic  name  "  fly  "  is 
too  obvious  to  require  mention. 

The  ordinary  Aryan  name  for  "  bee  "  —  Skr. 
bha,  O.  H.  G.  pia,  Old  Eng.  beot  Eng.  bee  — 
refers  to  the  bright  colour  of  the  insect,  but  the 
Lat.  apis  is  the  "  thrifty  creature  "  and  the  Greek 
/neXicrcra  is  the  "  maker  of  honey."  The  Old 
Aryans  not  only  kept  bees  for  their  honey,  but 
out  of  the  honey  they  made  an  intoxicating  drink 
called  madhU)  from  which  we  have  the  Zend 
madhu  and  Greek  p€0v,  "wine,"  Russ.  medii, 
Irish  meadh.  Old  Eng.  medu>  Eng.  mead.  Wine 
and  must  are  Old  Aryan  words,  and  the  same 
is  probably  true  of  ale ;  but  in  this  latter  in- 
stance we  cannot  safely  infer  that  what  we  call 
ale  was  brewed,  for  the  meaning  of  the  word  has 
varied  considerably.  Lith.  alus,  Old  Norse  07, 
Old  Eng.  ealay  mean  "  beer,"  but  the  Skr.  all 
means  a  spirituous  liquor,  and  the  Irish  ol  is 
applied  to  any  kind  of  drink.  As  for  the  word 
beer  itself,  it  is  doubtful  if  it  can  be  traced  out- 
side of  the  Teutonic  languages  ;  for  although  it 
occurs  in  Irish,  Welsh,  and  modern  Persian,  it 
does  not  conform  to  Grimm's  law,  and  has  thus 
most  likely  been  borrowed  from  English  or  some 
other  Teutonic  source. 

Whether  our  Aryan  forefathers  brewed  ale 
or  not,  they  certainly  cultivated  barley  and  prob- 
ably wheat,  and  ground  them  into  meal  in  mills. 
127 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

They  were  familiar  with  the  plow,  the  yoke,  and 
the  spade.  Their  harvests  were  reaped  with  a 
sickle,  and  the  grain  was  duly  threshed  and  win- 
nowed, and  carried  to  mill  in  wagons  fitted  with 
wheels  and  axle-trees.  The  blacksmith's  work 
with  hammer  and  anvil,  forge  and  bellows,  was 
also  carried  on.  Sewing  and  spinning  were  fem- 
inine occupations,  and  garments  were  woven  out 
of  sheep's  wool.  The  art  of  tanning  was  also 
practised,  and  leather  shoes  were  worn.  The 
entire  career  of  the  Aryans  has  been  that  of  a 
warlike  people.  In  the  primitive  times  of  which 
we  are  treating,  their  principal  weapons  were  the 
lance,  the  bow  and  arrow,  the  sword  and  dagger 
and  mace,  with  helmet  and  buckler  for  defence. 
That  the  early  Aryans  were  acquainted  with 
the  sea  seems  unquestionable,  for  the  name  oc- 
curs, with  very  little  change  in  sound  and  hardly 
any  in  meaning,  in  nearly  all  the  Indo-European 
languages.  The  Lat.  marey  whence  our  adjec- 
tive marine,  appears  in  Skr.  mira,  Russ.  moru, 
Lith.  mares,  Irish  muir,  Welsh  mor,  Goth,  marei, 
O.  H.  G.  man,  Old  Norse  mar,  Old  Eng.  mere. 
In  English  meer  is  an  archaic  word,  still  used  in 
poetry  in  the  sense  of  "  lake,"  and  it  appears  in 
many  well-known  names  of  English  lakes,  as 
Grasmere  and  Windermere.  The  original  sense 
of  the  word  has  something  poetic  in  it,  for  it 
means  the  barren,  desolate  waste,  just  as  we 
find  it  commonly  described  in  Homer.  The 
128 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

Teutonic  languages,  however,  have  generally 
adopted  another  name.  In  Skr.  sava  means 
simply  "  water,"  but  the  more  specific  sense 
appears  in  Goth,  saivs,  O.  H.  G.  seo,  Old  Eng. 
s<fw,  Eng.  sea.  It  is  noticeable  that  while  modern 
English  applies  this  name  to  great  bodies  of  wa- 
ter, and  keeps  meer  only  in  the  sense  of  lake,  in 
modern  German  the  case  is  just  the  reverse,  — • 
in  German  meer  is  the  sea,  but  see  is  a  lake.  The 
only  other  conspicuous  deviation  from  the  gen- 
eral Aryan  usage  is  a  very  characteristic  one. 
The  Greeks,  who  were  the  most  maritime  of 
all  peoples  that  have  existed,  save  the  English, 
had  three  names  for  the  sea,  of  which  the  later 
6d\a.cr<T(L  and  TreXayos  referred  to  the  boister- 
ous, white-crested  waves,  but  the  earlier  -JTOJTOS 
meant  a  "pathway  for  travel."  What  large 
bodies  of  water  the  primitive  Aryans  could  have 
known  is  not  fully  ascertained,  but  they  were 
perhaps  the  Caspian  and  the  Sea  of  Aral.  On 
these  inland  seas,  or  along  the  great  rivers 
which  flowed  through  their  country,  the  Aryans 
would  seem  to  have  plied  in  boats  rowed  with 
oars ;  but  whether  they  had  advanced  farther 
than  this  is  uncertain.  At  all  events,  there  is  a 
singular  lack  of  agreement  among  all  the  com- 
mon words  indicative  of  a  higher  acquaintance 
with  the  art  of  navigation. 

With  these  illustrations  we  must  bring  our 

o 

exposition  too  abruptly  to  a  close.  By  the  course 
129 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  inquiry  we  have  followed,  something  might 
be  brought  out  concerning  the  political  organi- 
zation of  the  primitive  Aryans,  which  appears  to 
have  been  extremely  simple.  "  The  people," 
says  Professor  Whitney,  "  was  doubtless  a  con- 
geries of  petty  tribes,  under  chiefs  and  leaders 
rather  than  kings,  and  with  institutions  of  a 
patriarchal  cast,  among  which  the  reduction  to 
servitude  of  prisoners  taken  in  war  appears  not 
to  have  been  wanting."  This  inquiry,  however, 
would  take  us  far  beyond  our  limits,  and  might 
be  more  advantageously  conducted  in  another 
connection,  where  we  might  avail  ourselves  of 
the  harmonious  results  which  Sir  Henry  Maine, 
Mr.  Freeman,  and  others  have  elicited  from  a 
comparative  survey  of  Indo-European  politics 
and  jurisprudence.  But  this  most  interesting  and 
profitable  study  must  be  postponed  to  another 
occasion.  In  the  present  paper,  confining  my- 
self chiefly  to  the  material  circumstances  of  the 
primitive  Aryans,  I  have  endeavoured  only  to 
give  some  idea  of  the  method  by  which  sound 
conclusions  are  reached,  through  the  study  of 
words,  concerning  the  civilization  of  an  age  of 
which  the  historic  tradition  has  been  utterly  lost. 
More  than  this  could  not  well  be  attempted  in 
so  brief  an  exposition.  The  examples  have  been 
scanty,  and  from  the  nature  of  the  subject  they 
may  perhaps  have  seemed  rather  dry.  It  is  not 
in  a  moment  that  one  can  become  fully  possessed 
130 


OLD  ARYAN  WORDS 

with  the  rare  fascination  which  surrounds  the 
study  of  the  historic  lessons  conveyed  in  words. 
Yet  possibly  to  some  reader  it  may  have  come 
as  a  novel  and  striking  thought  that  out  of  mere 
grammars  and  dictionaries  a  trustworthy  picture 
of  the  long-forgotten  past  may  be  reconstructed. 
Inadequate  as  our  illustrations  have  been,  none 
can  fail  to  perceive  the  historic  interest  and  value 
of  the  information  which  has  been  gained  in  this 
way.  Inquiries  of  this  sort  need,  no  doubt,  much 
caution  and  sagacity  to  be  conducted  success- 
fully ;  but  when  properly  sifted  there  is  no  more 
unimpeachable  testimony  to  the  past  than  that 
which  the  aspect  of  words  gives  us.  For  the 
changes  of  vowel  and  consonant  proceed  accord- 
ing to  general  laws  which  observations  may  de- 
tect, but  with  which  no  individual  will  is  able  to 
tamper.  And  thus  it  is  that  in  the  winged  word 
which  seems  to  perish  in  its  flight  through  the  air 
we  have  nevertheless  the  most  abiding  record, 
though  unwittingly  preserved,  of  the  knowledge 
and  achievements  of  mankind. 

August,  1876. 


131 


WAS   THERE   A   PRIMEVAL 
MOTHER  TONGUE? 

OF  all  the  great  changes  in  thought  which 
the  present  century  has  witnessed,  per- 
haps none  is  more  striking  than  that 
which  has  occurred  in  our  methods  of  studying 
the  beginnings  of  human  culture.  The  dis- 
coveries of  Grimm  and  Bopp  in  comparative 
philology,  the  decipherment  of  mysterious  in- 
scriptions in  Egypt  and  Assyria,  the  study  of 
legal  archaeology  illustrated  by  Sir  Henry  Maine, 
the  doctrine  of  survivals  so  ably  expounded  by 
Mr.  Tylor,  and  especially  the  geologic  proof 
of  the  enormous  antiquity  of  the  human  race, 
together  with  the  wide-reaching  and  powerful 
speculations  of  Mr.  Darwin,  have  all  contributed 
to  bring  about  this  change.  So  completely  has 
our  point  of  view  been  shifted  by  these  various 
theories  and  discoveries  that  many  speculations 
which  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century 
possessed  an  absorbing  interest  have  now  come 
to  seem  frivolous  or  irrelevant;  and  nothing 
can  better  illustrate  the  extent  of  the  change 
than  the  fate  of  some  of  these  speculations.  It 
132 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

is  not  many  years  since  ethnologists  were  rack- 
ing their  brains  to  show  how  the  North  Ameri- 
can Indians  might  have  come  over  from  Asia ; 
and  there  was  felt  to  be  a  sort  of  speculative 
necessity  for  discovering  points  of  resemblance 
between  American  languages,  myths,  and  social 
observances  and  those  of  the  Oriental  world. 
Now  the  Aborigines  of  this  continent  were  made 
out  to  be  Kamtchatkans,  and  now  Chinamen, 
and  again  they  were  shown,  with  quaint  erudi- 
tion, to  be  remnants  of  the  ten  tribes  of  Israel. 
Perhaps  none  of  these  theories  have  been  ex- 
actly disproved,  but  they  have  all  been  super- 
seded, and  have  lost  their  interest.  We  now 
know  that  in  the  earliest  post-Pliocene  times,  if 
not  in  the  Pliocene  age  itself,  at  least  four  hun- 
dred thousand  years  ago,  the  American  conti- 
nent was  inhabited  by  human  beings.  The 
primeval  Californian  skull,  moreover,  resembles 
the  modern  American  Indian  type,  and  is  not 
to  be  confounded  with  Old  World  skulls.  It 
is  probable,  therefore,  that  far  back  in  post- 
Pliocene  times,  before  the  great  glacial  period, 
the  ancestors  of  the  American  Indians  had  al- 
ready become  distinguished  from  the  races  of 
Asia.  Now  both  before  and  since  that  time  the 
eastern  and  western  continents  have  been  re- 
peatedly joined  together  at  their  northern  ex- 
tremities. In  view  of  such  facts,  whatever  opin- 
ion we  may  ultimately  adopt,  we  feel  that  all 
133 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

theories  of  the  recent  colonization  of  America 
by  Kamtchatkans,  or  Chinamen,  or  the  ten 
tribes  of  Israel,  are  superseded  and  laid  on  the 
shelf.  That  recent  migrations  may  have  occurred 
is  quite  another  affair.  Theories  like  those  of 
Brasseur  de  Bourbourg  are  still  to  be  treated  on 
their  own  merits,  independently  of  general  con- 
siderations. But  one  now  perceives,  in  reading 
them,  that  they  were  dictated  by  a  kind  of 
speculative  necessity  which  we  no  longer  feel, 
because  our  whole  point  of  view  has  been  shifted. 
In  similar  wise  have  fared  the  innumerable 
plans  which  formerly  occupied  the  attention  of 
scholars  for  colonizing  the  whole  world  from  the 
highlands  of  Armenia.  The  ethnological  infor- 
mation contained  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  is  of 
great  interest  and  value,  but  so  far  from  relating 
to  the  whole  human  race,  it  totally  ignores  the 
larger  part  of  the  world,  and  is  concerned  only 
with  the  peoples  of  which  an  inhabitant  of  Syria 
might  be  expected  to  know  something.  Long 
before  any  possible  date  for  the  diffusion  from 
Armenia  there  described,  we  know  that  popu- 
lous and  stationary  communities  flourished  on 
the  banks  of  the  Nile  and  the  Euphrates  ;  while 
savage  or  barbarous  tribes,  using  stone  hatchets 
and  flint-headed  arrows,  wandered  through  the 
primeval  forests  of  Europe  and  America.  Ar- 
menia retains  its  interest,  to  some  extent,  as  a 
possible  starting-point,  but  only  in  connection 
134 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

with  the  Semitic  race  and  its  neighbours, —  so 
thoroughly  have  our  notions  been  remodelled. 

Old-fashioned  speculations  concerning  the 
primitive  unity  of  human  speech  have  similarly 
ifallen  into  discredit.  Previous  to  the  detection 
of  the  kinship  between  the  various  forms  of 
Aryan  speech,  no  end  of  books  were  written  to 
prove  that  all  known  languages  were  in  some  way 
descended  from  Hebrew ;  not  that  there  was  any 
warrant  for  such  an  opinion,  either  in  Scripture 
or  in  the  general  probabilities  of  the  case,  but 
that  the  preeminence  of  Hebrew  as  the  lan- 
guage of  Jehovah's  chosen  people  and  the  ve- 
hicle of  divine  revelation  created  a  speculative 
need  for  proving  it  to  be  the  original  uncor- 
rupted  dialect  of  mankind.  Since  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Aryan  family  of  languages,  it  has 
still  been  felt  necessary  to  prove  that  all  existing 
varieties  of  speech  have  had  a  common  origin, 
and  as  a  step  toward  this  end  great  learning  and 
ingenuity  have  been  expended  in  the  attempt 
to  detect  some  primordial  similarity  between  the 
Semitic  languages  and  languages  of  Aryan  de- 
scent. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  all  this  learning 
and  ingenuity  have  been  utterly  wasted.  Apart 
from  a  few  casual  coincidences,  as  in  the  He- 
brew and  Sanskrit  words  for  six,  there  is  not  a 
trace  of  similarity  between  the  Semitic  and  the 
Aryan  vocabularies ;  while  as  regards  both  in- 
135 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

flection  and  syntax,  the  entire  structure  of  these 
two  families  of  speech  is  so  radically  unlike,  that 
only  the  most  desperate  feeling  of  speculative 
necessity  could  ever  have  induced  any  one  to 
seek  a  common  original  for  the  two.  But  after 
getting  irretrievably  worsted  in  the  encounter 
with  facts,  this  speculative  craving  is  now  out- 
grown and  laid  aside  with  the  others.  The  anti- 
quity of  the  human  race  again  comes  in  to  alter 
entirely  our  standpoint.  Considering  how  mul- 
tifariously language  varies  from  age  to  age,  and 
considering  that  mankind  has  doubtless  pos- 
sessed the  power  of  articulate  speech  for  some 
thousands  of  centuries,  it  no  longer  seems  worth 
while  to  seek  immediate  conclusions  about  prim- 
itive speech  from  linguistic  records  which  do 
not  carry  us  back  more  than  four  or  five  thou- 
sand years. 

From  the  vantage-ground  which  we  now  oc- 
cupy, it  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  the  hypothesis 
of  a  single  primeval  language,  from  which  all 
existing  languages  have  descended,  involves  an 
absurd  assumption.  Those  who  maintain  such 
an  hypothesis,  in  so  far  as  their  statements  have 
any  definite  and  tangible  meaning,  must  mean 
that  all  existing  languages  stand  in  relation  to 
the  hypothetical  primitive  language  very  much 
as  French  and  Italian  stand  in  relation  to  Latin, 
or  English  and  German  to  Old  Teutonic,  or 
Latin  and  Old  Teutonic  to  Old  Aryan.  But  in 

136 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

point  of  fact  the  case  is  very  different  from  this. 
We  know  that  French  and  Italian  are  differ- 
ently modified  forms  of  Latin,  because  we  can 
trace  the  modern  words  directly  back  to  their 
ancient  prototypes,  and  verify  by  the  aid  of 
written  documents  their  various  changes  of  form 
and  meaning.  After  carrying  on  for  a  while  this 
process  of  comparison,  we  find  that  the  modern 
words  vary  from  the  ancient  according  to  cer- 
tain well-defined  rules,  which  are  different  for 
French  and  Italian,  but  are  singularly  uniform 
for  each  language.  So  unmistakable  is  the  reg- 
ularity of  the  system  of  changes,  that  if  all 
record  of  Latin  were  to  be  swept  away  we  might 
still  reconstruct  the  language  from  a  compara- 
tive study  of  its  modern  descendants.  Mois  and 
mese,  for  example,  the  French  and  Italian  words 
for  "  month,"  would  give  us  the  Latin  mentis, 
and  nothing  else;  and  so  on  throughout.  In 
similar  wise,  although  the  Old  Aryan  language 
has  left  no  written  documents  to  tell  us  of  its 
grammar  and  vocabulary,  we  have  nevertheless 
detected  such  a  regular  system  of  phonetic 
changes  among  the  languages  which  have  de- 
scended from  it  that  we  have  been  already  ena- 
bled to  go  some  way  toward  reconstructing  this 
extinct  tongue.  Month  and  mentis,  for  example, 
carry  us  back,  with  little  less  than  absolute  cer- 
tainty, to  an  Old  Aryan  mans  a ;  and  so  on  as 
before,  though  here  the  inquiry  is  an  abstruse 
137 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

one,  requiring  patience  and  sound  judgment, 
and  there  is  room  enough  for  doubt  in  many 
cases.  The  general  relationship  of  the  Aryan 
languages  to  their  common  ancestor  is,  however, 
no  less  clearly  manifest  than  that  of  the  modern 
Romanic  languages  to  the  Latin.  After  fifty 
years  of  such  comparative  study,  in  a  cautious 
and  prudent  way,  we  have  succeeded  in  making 
out  some  few  cases  of  demonstrable  genetic  kin- 
ship among  groups  of  languages.  Beside  the 
Aryan  family,  in  the  study  of  which  such  pro- 
found knowledge  has  been  obtained,  we  have 
clearly  made  out  the  existence  of  the  Dravidian 
family  in  Southern  India,  and  of  the  Altaic 
family,  —  to  which  the  Finnish,  Hungarian,  and 
Turkish  belong,  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  long- 
established  Semitic  family.  Other  families  of 
speech  no  doubt  exist,  and  will  by  and  by  have 
their  relationships  definitely  marked  out.  But 
the  moment  we  try  to  compare  these  families 
with  each  other,  in  order  to  detect  some  defin- 
able link  of  relationship  between  them,  we  are 
instantly  baffled.  Any  true  family  of  languages 
will  show  a  community  of  structure  as  conspic- 
uous as  that  which  is  seen  among  vertebrate 
animals.  The  next  family  you  study  will  be  as 
distinctly  marked  in  its  characteristics  as  is  the 
group  of  articulated  insects,  spiders,  and  crusta- 
ceans. But  to  compare  the  two  families  with 
each  other  will  prove  as  futile  as  to  compare  a 
138 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

reindeer  with  a  lobster.  The  only  conclusion  to 
which  you  can  logically  come  is  that  while  cer- 
tain languages,  here  and  there,  have  become 
variously  modified,  so  as  to  give  rise  to  well- 
defined  families  of  speech,  the  like  process  has 
not  taken  place  universally.  In  other  words,  the 
derivation  of  a  dozen  languages  from  a  common 
ancestor  is  not  a  permanent  and  universal,  but 
a  temporary  and  local  phenomenon  in  the  his- 
tory of  human  speech,  and  we  need  not  expect 
to  come  across  any  such  fact  of  derivation,  ex- 
cept where  it  can  be  duly  accounted  for  by  the 
peculiar  circumstances  of  the  case. 

This  conclusion  is  reinforced  when  we  consider 
the  circumstances  under  which  a  single  language 
gives  rise  to  several  mutually  resembling  descend- 
ants. Obviously  such  a  language  must  have  a 
high  degree  of  permanence  and  a  wide  extension. 
It  must  be  spoken  for  a  long  time  by  large 
bodies  of  men  spread  over  a  wide  territorial  area. 
Take,  for  example,  the  rise  of  the  modern  Ro- 
manic languages  from  the  Latin.  In  the  fourth 
century  after  Christ  the  Latin  language  was 
spoken  all  over  the  Italian  and  Spanish  penin- 
sulas, throughout  most  of  Gaul  and  Switzerland, 
along  the  banks  of  the  Upper  Danube,  and  in 
what  are  now  called  the  Rumanian  principalities. 
In  all  these  countries  Latin  was  the  speech  in 
which  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  were  transacted, 
and  this  had  come  to  be  so  mainly  because  the 
139 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

native  dialects  of  these  countries  were  numerous 
and  uncultivated  ;  and  as  all  were  in  close  polit- 
ical and  social  connection  with  Rome,  it  was  a 
much  simpler  matter  for  all  to  learn  Latin  than 
for  the  Romans  and  their  subjects  alike  to  learn 
a  score  of  barbarous  tongues.  The  business  of 
life  got  more  easily  transacted  in  this  way.  No 
such  result  followed  the  conquest  of  the  Eastern 
world,  because  Greek  was  spoken  all  over  the 
East,  and  every  educated  Roman  knew  Greek 
already ;  so  that  in  this  case  it  was  a  simpler 
matter  for  the  conquerors  to  talk  Greek  than 
for  their  subjects  to  learn  Latin.  Practical  con- 
venience is  the  final  arbiter  in  pretty  much  all 
such  cases.  Now  it  must  not  be  supposed  that 
the  Latin  talked  all  over  the  West  was  quite 
like  the  elegant  language  of  Caesar  and  Virgil. 
It  was  only  educated  people  in  Rome  or  Milan, 
and  perhaps  in  such  cities  as  Nismes  or  Lyons, 
that  talked  like  this.  Colloquial  Latin  always 
had  plenty  of  dialectic  peculiarities.  Even  in 
Italy  the  Latin  had  supplanted,  in  former  times, 
a  number  of  kindred  Umbrian  and  Sabine  dia- 
lects, and  we  may  be  sure  that  all  these  left  their 
mark  upon  the  common  speech.  In  getting  dif- 
fused over  Europe,  this  impure  colloquial  Latin 
could  not  fail  to  pick  up  here  and  there  some  pe- 
culiar word  or  phrase,  while  now  and  then  some 
other  word  or  phrase  would  be  lost  from  its  old 
stock  and  forgotten,  so  that  people  did  not  talk 
140 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

just  alike  throughout  the  empire.  A  Spaniard's 
local  peculiarities  of  utterance  and  phraseology 
were  distinguishable  from  those  of  a  Rhsetian, 
though  both  talked  Latin  and  could  understand 
each  other. 

Now  as  every  language  changes  more  or  less 
from  age  to  age,  so  the  speech  of  the  Romans 
in  the  fourth  century  after  Christ  had  come  to 
differ  in  many  respects  from  the  speech  of  their 
forefathers  who,  six  hundred  years  earlier,  had 
fought  against  Hannibal.  But  up  to  this  time 
the  intercourse  between  the  various  parts  of  the 
Roman  world  had  been  so  close  and  continuous 
that  the  capital  still  furnished  the  standard  of 
discourse  for  the  whole  empire.  During  the 
next  six  centuries  a  different  set  of  circumstances 
was  at  work.  For  a  second  time  the  Latin  lan- 
guage was  learned  by  scores  of  barbarous  tribes, 
but  this  time  it  was  no  longer  Rome  that  set 
the  fashion  and  maintained  the  standard.  In  in- 
numerable provincial  towns  and  barbaric  assem- 
blies new  standards  of  speaking  were  gradually 
established.  The  lines  of  connection,  adminis- 
trative and  commercial,  which  had  formerly  been 
kept  up,  were  in  many  cases  severed,  and  each 
little  tract  of  country  led  a  more  sequestered  life 
than  before.  Many  new  expressions  came  into 
use, —  Teutonic  in  Gaul  and  Italy,  Arabic  in 
Spain,  Slavic  in  Rumania ;  and  local  idioms  and 
peculiarities  of  accent  multiplied,  in  the  absence 
141 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  a  uniform  standard.  In  this  way  the  vulgar 
Latin  insensibly  diverged  into  a  host  of  provin- 
cial dialects,  or  patois,  the  divergence  being  great 
or  little  according  to  the  frequency  of  intercourse 
between  different  localities.  Thus  the  Tuscan 
and  the  Savoyard  could  both  understand  the 
Milanese,  the  inhabitant  of  Lyons  could  talk 
with  the  Savoyard  and  with  the  citizen  of  Or- 
leans, and  the  Orleanese  would  be  intelligible 
to  the  Parisian ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Parisian  could  hardly  carry  on  a  conversation 
with  the  Savoyard,  and  would  be  quite  incapable 
of  understanding  the  Tuscan.  Some  such  slowly 
graded  transition  may  still  be  noticed  by  the  trav- 
eller from  France  to  Italy  who  takes  pains  to 
observe  the  speech  of  the  common  people.  At 
Nice,  for  instance,  local  newspapers  are  pub- 
lished in  a  dialect  which  one  hardly  knows 
whether  to  call  French,  Proven9al,  or  Italian. 

After  this  process  of  divergence  had  gone  on 
for  some  time,  a  new  start  was  taken  toward  uni- 
formity, but  in  such  a  way  as  to  enhance  and 
complete  the  divergence  already  begun.  When 
literary  men  gave  up  trying  to  write  classical 
Latin,  and  began  to  clothe  their  thoughts  in  the 
colloquial  Romance  or  vulgar  tongue  of  the 
times,  new  centres  of  political  and  intellectual 
life  had  begun  to  be  formed  at  Paris,  Toulouse, 
and  Florence ;  and  the  dialects  of  these  cities 
began  to  assume  preeminence  as  literary  and 
142 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

fashionable  dialects.  As  southern  France  came 
more  and  more  under  the  sway  of  Paris,  the 
second  of  these  centres  indeed  lost  its  relative 
importance,  and  the  Proven9al  tongue  gradually 
sank  into  an  unfashionable  patois ;  but  Parisian 
and  Tuscan,  on  the  other  hand,  came  to  be  so 
generally  read  and  spoken  that  after  a  while  they 
quite  crowded  their  intermediate  sister  dialects 
out  of  sight,  and  to-day  they  are  the  sole  recog- 
nized representatives  of  good  French  and  good 
Italian  speech,  although  there  is  still  a  great  deal 
of  French  spoken  that  is  not  Parisian,  and  a 
great  deal  of  Italian  that  is  not  Tuscan.  This 
predominance  of  the  two  central  dialects  is  in 
our  day  increasing  more  rapidly  and  decisively 
than  ever  before,  and  the  process  will  unques- 
tionably go  on  until  all  Frenchmen  speak  Pari- 
sian, and  all  Italians  speak  Tuscan.  Railroads 
and  telegraphs,  newspapers  and  novels,  have 
already  sealed  the  death-warrant  of  all  patois, 
and  the  execution  is  only  a  question  of  time. 
It  is  because  of  the  wide  diffusion  in  our  own 
country  of  these  powerful  agencies  for  keeping 
men  in  contact  with  each  other  that  we  have  no 
varieties  of  dialect  here  worth  speaking  of.  It 
is  not  at  all  likely  that  in  this  country  such  dia- 
lectic variations  will  ever  spring  up.  And  for 
the  same  reason  it  is  not  likely  that  any  essen- 
tial divergence  will  ever  arise  between  the  Eng- 
lish language  as  spoken  in  England  and  the 
H3 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

same  language  as  spoken  in  America.  In  the 
Middle  Ages,  wolves,  brute  and  human,  tax- 
gatherers  and  robber  barons,  as  well  as  bad  roads 
and  imperfect  vehicles,  made  a  few  miles  of  wood 
or  mountain  a  greater  barrier  to  intercourse  than 
the  wide  ocean  is  to-day.  For  the  language  of 
the  thriving  people  to  whom,  as  to  the  ancient 
Greeks,  the  ocean  has  become  (TTOVTOS)  a  com- 
mon "  pathway ;  "  who  have  taught  mankind 
how  to  drive  ships  with  steam,  and  how  to  send 
electric  flashes  of  intelligence  through  the  watery 
abyss,  —  for  this  language  a  future  of  unprece- 
dented glory  is  in  store.  By  the  end  of  the 
twentieth  century,  English  will  no  doubt  be 
spoken  by  something  like  eight  hundred  million 
people,  crowding  all  over  North  America  and 
Australia,  as  well  as  over  a  good  part  of  Africa 
and  India,  with  island  colonies  in  every  sea  and 
naval  stations  on  every  cape.  By  that  time  so 
large  a  proportion  of  the  business  of  the  world 
will  be  transacted  by  people  of  English  descent 
that,  as  a  mere  matter  of  convenience,  the  whole 
world  will  have  to  learn  English.  Whatever 
other  language  any  one  may  have  learned  in 
childhood,  he  will  find  it  necessary  to  speak 
English  also.  In  this  way  our  language  will  be- 
come more  and  more  cosmopolitan,  while  all 
others  become  more  and  more  provincial,  until 
after  a  great  length  of  time  they  will  probably 
one  after  another  assume  the  character  and  incur 
144 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

the  fate  of  local  patois.  One  by  one  they  will 
become  extinct,  leaving  English  as  the  universal 
language  of  mankind. 

There  is,  I  think,  a  considerable  probability 
that  things  will  come  to  pass  in  this  way,  though 
the  process  must  of  course  be  a  very  slow  one, 
and  the  result  here  prefigured  will  very  likely 
come  so  far  down  in  the  future  as  to  coincide 
with  the  disappearance  of  barbarism  from  the 
earth,  and  with  the  inauguration  of  that  pacific 
"  parliament  of  man  "  of  which  the  philosophic 
poet  has  told  us.  But,  however  the  actual  result 
may  shape  itself  in  its  details,  the  considerations 
here  brought  forward  would  seem  to  indicate 
that  complete  community  of  speech  belongs 
rather  to  the  later  than  to  the  earlier  stages  of 
human  progress.  What  we  may  regard  as  cer- 
tain is  that  community  of  speech  on  a  wide  scale 
requires  prolonged  and  continuous  business 
communication  among  large  bodies  of  men. 
Where  communication  is  seriously  interrupted 
for  a  long  period  of  time,  as  in  the  Dark  Ages 
of  Europe,  the  tendency  is  for  the  common 
language  to  break  up  into  a  number  of  more  or 
less  similar  dialects ;  and  in  proportion  as  fre- 
quent communication  is  resumed  there  is  mani- 
fested an  opposite  tendency  of  a  few  central  dia- 
lects to  crush  out  their  neighbours,  and  to  grow 
into  wide-spread  languages.  This  is,  in  brief, 
the  way  in  which  languages  grow,  and  diverge, 

'45 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

and  supplant  one  another.  There  is  nothing 
that  is  mysterious  or  metaphysical  in  the  process ; 
it  is  purely  a  matter  of  practical  convenience. 
In  the  long  run  the  actions  of  man  are  deter- 
mined by  what  we  may  call  the  "  law  of  least 
effort : "  the  easiest  way  of  doing  things  is  the 
one  which,  sooner  or  later,  is  sure  to  be  adopted ; 
and  to  this  general  law  the  myriad  little  actions 
involved  in  speech  form  no  exception. 

Carrying  back  to  ancient  times  the  lessons  we 
have  learned  from  the  career  of  Latin,  we  find 
that  the  facts,  so  far  as  known,  sustain  our  con- 
clusion. Among  the  Semitic  peoples  there  was 
undoubtedly  a  time  when  all  were  of  one  blood 
and  one  speech.  No  one  doubts  that  Arabs, 
Jews,  and  Syrians  are  as  closely  related  by  de- 
scent as  Germans,  Swedes,  and  Englishmen. 
The  social  condition  of  these  Semitic  races, 
shortly  before  the  historic  period,  is  best  repre- 
sented by  the  wandering  Arabs  of  the  present 
day.  In  this  patriarchal  stage  of  society  there  is 
no  such  close  political  cohesion  as  there  is  among 
nations  of  modern  type,  but  there  is  frequent 
intercourse  for  business  purposes,  and  even 
sometimes  for  purely  literary  objects,  as  in  the 
old  competitions  of  bards  at  Mecca  before  the 
time  of  Mohammed ;  and  this  intercourse  has 
sufficed  to  preserve  the  main  features  of  the  lan- 
guage. In  early  times  there  was  sufficient  com- 
munication between  the  patriarchal  tribes  of 
146 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

Arabia  and  Palestine  and  the  adjacent  civilized 
nations  of  Assyria,  Babylonia,  and  Phoenicia  to 
prevent  any  very  wide  divergence  of  speech. 
The  differences  between  Hebrew,  Syriac,  and 
Assyrian  are  not  greater  than  the  differences 
between  French,  Spanish,  and  Italian. 

So,  too,  in  the  direct  line  of  our  own  ancestry, 
we  find  that  the  primitive  Aryans  were  a  race 
partly  agricultural  and  partly  pastoral  in  pur- 
suits, living  in  durable  houses,  grouped  together 
into  large  villages,  surrounded  by  defensible 
walls.  The  structure  of  the  family  was  some- 
what cruder  than  among  the  patriarchal  Arabs 
and  Hebrews;  the  social  and  political  system 
may  have  been  in  some  respects  such  as  we  see 
vestiges  of  to-day  in  the  village  communities 
of  Russia  and  Hindustan.  Preeminent  among 
all  early  races  in  the  rearing  of  flocks  and 
herds,  the  old  Aryans  required  immense  grazing 
grounds,  and  would  seem  to  have  occupied  all 
the  wide  grassy  plains  which  lie  between  the 
mountains  of  central  Tartary  and  the  southern 
slopes  of  European  Russia.  At  the  same  time 
their  agricultural  pursuits  and  their  durable  vil- 
lages imply  a  considerable  amount  of  political 
stability,  and  there  is  good  evidence  that  for  a 
long  time  a  common  language  was  spoken 
throughout  this  vast  territory.  As  we  follow 
these  Aryan  tribes  in  their  great  career  of  per- 
manent conquest  and  settlement,  one  branch 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

into  Persia  and  India,  and  other  branches  into 
Greece,  Italy,  Germany,  Gaul,  and  Britain,  we 
come  upon  the  same  linguistic  phenomena  which 
we  observed  above  in  the  mediaeval  history  of 
Latin.  With  the  isolation  of  the  various  tribes, 
separated  from  each  other  by  wide  distances, 
we  see  the  Aryan  mother  tongue  break  up  into 
innumerable  dialectic  forms  ;  until,  by  and  by, 
with  the  rise  of  new  and  distinct  centres  of  social 
life,  new  and  distinct  languages  come  upon  the 
scene,  and  acquire  literary  immortality  in  the 
Vedas,  in  the  Avesta,  in  the  epics  of  Homer 
and  Virgil,  in  the  novels  of  Cervantes  and 
Turgenief,  in  the  sermons  of  Bossuet  and  Tay- 
lor, in  the  dramas  of  Shakespeare  and  Goethe, 
and  in  that  palladium  of  linguistic  stability  in 
the  future,  —  the  English  version  of  the  Bible. 
In  such  cases  as  these,  where  a  single  durable 
mother  language  has  produced  several  durable 
offspring,  the  signs  of  kinship,  whether  in  gram- 
mar or  in  vocabulary,  are  never  obliterated. 
After  an  independent  career  of  more  than  ten 
centuries,  the  genetic  relationship  of  French  and 
Italian  is  a  perfectly  patent  fact,  about  which 
there  could  be  no  question  whatever,  even  if  all 
memory  of  the  Roman  Empire  had  lapsed  from 
men's  minds,  even  if  some  fanatical  Cardinal 
Ximenes  had  burned  in  a  bonfire  every  scrap  of 
French  and  Italian  literature  that  ever  existed. 
After  an  independent  career  of  not  less  than  forty 
148 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

centuries,  the  kinship  of  Latin  and  Sanskrit  is 
equally  unmistakable.  It  is  not  an  occult  fact, 
which  discloses  itself  only  after  a  subtle  philo- 
logical analysis ;  it  is  a  fact  so  plain  that  no  one 
who  reads  Sanskrit  and  Latin  books  can  possibly 
overlook  it,  and  it  forced  itself  upon  the  atten- 
tion of  the  first  European  scholars  who  studied 
Sanskrit  in  the  seventeenth  century,  though 
they  knew  nothing  of  philological  analysis  as 
we  understand  it.  The  similarity  between  the 
long-known  Hebrew  and  the  lately  deciphered 
Assyrian  is  no  less  conspicuous  ;  and  the  same 
may  be  said  of  the  Dravidian  languages  of 
southern  India  when  compared  with  one  another. 
But  as  we  leave  this  circle  of  studies,  and 
venture  out  into  the  wilderness  of  barbaric 
speech,  we  find  a  very  different  state  of  things. 
The  northern  portions  of  Asia  have  been  in- 
habited, within  the  period  of  history,  by  three 
different  races,  all  of  whom  still  survive,  —  the 
Finno-Tataric,  the  Mongolian,  and  the  Samo- 
yedic  races.  The  linguistic  relationships  of 
these  peoples  are  very  instructive.  In  the  first 
place,  the  Finno-Tataric  peoples  appear  to  be- 
long to  the  same  white  race  from  which  the 
Aryans  and  the  Semites  have  diverged,  although 
there  is  nothing  remotely  resembling  Aryan  or 
Semitic  in  Finno-Tataric  speech.  This  family 
of  languages  is  represented  in  Europe  by  the 
Finnish  and  its  neighbouring  dialects,  by  the 
149 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Hungarian,  and  by  the  Turkish.  In  Asia  it  is 
represented  by  .a  great  number  of  languages, 
spoken  in  the  Caucasus,  in  Turkistan,  and  in. 
Siberia.  Eastward  of  this  vast  region  comes  the 
Mongolian  or  yellow  race,  with  which  we  should 
be  very  careful  not  to  confound  the  Tatars. 
There  has  always  been  a  great  deal  of  confu- 
sion of  nomenclature  in  speaking  of  these  races, 
but  the  lines  of  distinction  are  really  simple 
enough  when  we  have  once  learned  them.  The 
ambiguous  word  which  is  responsible  for  most 
of  the  confusion  is  the  epithet  Tatar,  which  did 
originally  belong  to  the  Mongols,  but  has  come 
to  be  applied  by  preference  to  the  Turkish 
family.  When  Jinghis  Khan,  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  made  the  name  Tatar  a  sign  of  terror 
and  humiliation  to  all  Asia  and  Europe,  it  be- 
came customary  to  apply  this  dreaded  epithet 
to  all  the  hordes  that  were  subject  to  the  Mon- 
golian ruler,  —  changing  the  word  slightly  to 
"  Tartar,"  so  as  to  add  to  it  a  mild  flavour  of 
the  bottomless  pit,  in  allusion  to  the  general 
behaviour  of  those  ugly  customers.  As  most 
of  these  hordes  with  which  Europeans  came 
into  contact  were  really  of  white  or  Turkish 
race,  the  name  Tatar  became  gradually  appro- 
priated to  these,  and  thus  became  unfit  for  dis- 
tinguishing the  yellow  Mongolians.  All  am- 
biguity would  be  avoided  if  we  were  to  drop 
the  name  Tatar  altogether,  and  substitute  the 
150 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

name  Turk  for  the  whole  group  of  peoples  of 
which  the  Ottomans  are  the  most  conspicuous. 
Our  school  atlases  already  have  "  Turkistan  " 
instead  of  the  old-fashioned  "  Independent 
Tartary." 

The  Mongolian  race  comprises  the  yellow 
tribes  of  central  Asia,  from  whom  came  Jinghis 
Khan,  Timur,  and  the  whole  line  of  Mogul 
sovereigns  of  India ;  and  also  the  Tungusians, 
or  Mandshus,  who  for  the  last  two  centuries 
have  ruled  over  China.  The  Chinese  them- 
selves, as  well  as  the  Japanese,  must  also  be 
considered  as  branches  of  the  Mongolian  race. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Samoyeds  of  northern 
Siberia  seem  to  be  allied  to  our  Eskimos,  but 
not  very  obviously  to  the  Mongolians. 

The  race  divisions  of  the  northern  half  of 
Asia  are  thus  clear  enough.  First,  we  have  the 
Finno-Tatars,  or  Finno-Turks,  belonging  to 
the  dark-haired  portion  of  the  great  white  race ; 
secondly,  we  have  the  Mongolians  ;  thirdly,  the 
arctic  Samoyeds.  But  the  languages  spoken  by 
these  peoples  cannot  be  classified  in  any  such 
simple  way.  The  languages  of  the  Finns  and 
Turks  carry  us  back  to  two  mother  tongues, 
and  these  are  possibly  reducible  to  one.  It  is 
otherwise  when  we  come  to  Mongolian  speech. 
On  the  one  hand,  the  Mongolian  dialects  of 
central  Asia  are  strikingly  similar  in  structure 
to  the  Tungusian  languages,  and  also  to  the 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Japanese;  and  in  these  structural  peculiarities 
they  agree  also  with  the  Finno-Turkic.  On  the 
other  hand,  when  we  study  the  vocabularies,  we 
do  not  find  any  similarity,  such  as  to  suggest 
a  primitive  identity,  between  Japanese,  Tungu- 
sian,  and  Mongolian  proper.  We  are  still  fur- 
ther baffled  when  we  come  to  Chinese.  The 
people  of  Japan  obtained  their  written  character 
from  China,  modifying  it  to  suit  the  needs  of 
their  own  language ;  and  so  a  Japanese  printed 
page  looks  very  like  a  printed  page  in  Chinese. 
If  you  were  just  to  look  at  these  printed  pages, 
you  would  imagine  that  the  two  languages  are 
very  similar,  just  as  a  Chinaman,  on  seeing 
Hungarian  printed  in  the  Roman  character, 
would  fancy  that  Hungarian  must  be  similar 
to  English  or  Latin.  In  reality  no  kinship  has 
yet  been  detected  between  the  languages  of 
China  and  Japan.  Not  only  in  vocabulary 
does  Chinese  differ  from  all  the  other  lan- 
guages spoken  by  the  Mongolian  race,  but  it 
even  presents  a  fundamentally  distinct  type  of 
linguistic  structure.  Age  after  age,  from  the 
remotest  antiquity  to  which  historic  or  philo- 
logic  inference  can  guide  us,  the  Chinese  have 
talked  with  different  words  and  after  a  different 
grammatical  fashion  from  their  yellow  neigh- 
bours ;  and  these  in  turn  have  maintained  each 
their  distinct  varieties  of  speech ;  although  all 
these  peoples  —  the  inhabitants  of  Japan  and 
152 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

China,  the  Tungusians,  and  the  Mongols  of 
central  Asia  —  are  undoubtedly  united  by  phys- 
ical bonds  of  descent  from  one  and  the  same 
primeval  yellow  race. 

The  inference  from  this  is  that  there  never 
was  a  primitive  Mongolian  mother  tongue  in 
the  sense  in  which  there  was  a  primitive  Aryan 
mother  tongue.  The  common  ancestors  of 
Japanese,  Chinese,  Tungusian,  and  Mongol 
never  at  any  time  lived  together  in  one  great 
society,  welded  into  a  unit  by  community  of 
language,  traditions,  and  customs,  as  was  the 
case  with  the  common  ancestors  of  Roman, 
Teuton,  and  Hindu.  On  the  contrary,  the  ab- 
original yellow  men  must  have  roamed  about 
in  detached  tribes,  like  the  blacks  of  Australia 
or  the  red  men  of  America,  with  half-formed 
languages  fluctuating  from  generation  to  gener- 
ation, diverging  with  great  rapidity,  and  speed- 
ily losing  all  traces  of  their  origin.  Ensconced 
within  convenient  mountain  barriers,  one  series 
of  these  yellow  tribes  worked  out  its  peculiar 
language  and  civilization  in  the  rich  hill-country 
and  along  the  great  navigable  rivers  of  China.  A 
second  series  of  tribes,  moving  without  reference 
to  these,  and  at  a  very  much  later  date,  formed 
a  permanent  community  in  the  islands  of  Japan. 
While  the  remainder  of  the  race  have  led  a  no- 
madic life  down  to  the  present  day ;  now  and 
then  engaging  in  combined  activity  for  a  gener- 
'53 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ation  or  two,  under  the  guidance  of  such  ad- 
venturers as  Attila,  or  Jinghis,  or  Timur,  to 
become  for  a  brief  season  the  "  scourge  of  God" 
and  the  terror  of  mankind,  but  ever,  as  now, 
incapable  of  stable  political  union.  With  such 
divergent  careers  as  these,  we  need  not  expect 
to  find  evidence  of  linguistic  community  among 
the  different  branches  of  the  yellow  race.  If  we 
find  one  set  of  linguistic  phenomena  in  China, 
and  a  totally  different  set  in  Japan,  and  yet 
another  set  among  the  barbarous  Mongols  and 
Tunguses,  this  is  no  more  than  we  might  have 
expected.  We  need  not  expect  to  find  such  phe- 
nomena as  the  coordinate  divergence  of  French 
and  Italian  from  a  common  Latin  mother 
tongue,  or  of  Latin  and  Sanskrit  from  a  com- 
mon Aryan  mother  tongue,  except  where  we 
can  find  historical  conditions  similar  to  those 
under  which  these  phenomena  were  manifested. 
Outside  of  that  broad  stream  of  history  which 
includes  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  worlds  we  do 
not  find  such  conditions,  save  in  a  few  sporadic 
cases.  On  the  contrary,  we  find  just  such  a 
state  of  things  as  would  follow  from  the  isolated 
independent  development  of  a  number  of  lan- 
guages, either  without  any  original  kinship,  or 
with  the  original  kinship  blurred  and  destroyed 
almost  from  the  very  beginning. 

The  last  clause  introduces  us  to  a  considera- 
tion concerning  barbarous  languages  which  is 
'54 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

of  the  first  importance.  There  is  a  certain  sense 
in  which  we  may  admit  community  of  origin 
for  languages  that  are  now  quite  dissimilar  ;  but 
the  sense  is  one  that  is  foreign  to  philological 
usage,  and  has  no  real  philological  significance. 
No  doubt  all  the  yellow  races  of  Asia  are  de- 
scended from  some  small  group  of  yellow  pro- 
genitors, and  no  doubt  this  ancestral  group  pos- 
sessed the  faculty  of  articulate  speech.  Most 
likely  the  group  was  at  the  outset  small  enough 
to  use  but  one  language,  and  as  the  group  in- 
creased in  size  and  became  subdivided  into  a 
number  of  tribes,  the  common  language  would 
soon  get  broken  up  into  dialects.  So  far  very 
good  ;  but  what  we  have  to  notice  is  that  under 
such  circumstances  the  breaking  up  of  the  com- 
mon language  would  not  in  any  way  resemble 
the  breaking  up  of  Latin  into  the  dialects  of 
France  and  Italy.  On  the  contrary,  the  several 
dialects  would  change  so  rapidly  as  to  lose  their 
identity :  within  a  couple  of  centuries  it  would 
be  impossible  to  detect  any  resemblance  to  the 
language  of  the  primitive  tribe.  The  speech  of 
uncivilized  tribes,  when  not  subject  to  the  power- 
ful conservative  force  of  widespread  custom  or 
permanent  literary  tradition,  changes  with  as- 
tonishing rapidity.  Such  languages  usually  con- 
tain but  a  few  hundred  words,  and  these  are 
often  forgotten  by  the  dozen  and  replaced  by 
new  ones  even  in  the  course  of  a  single  genera- 
'55 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

tion.  Among  many  South  American  Indians, 
as  Azara  tells  us,  the  language  changes  from 
clan  to  clan,  and  almost  from  hut  to  hut,  so  that 
members  of  different  families  are  obliged  to 
have  recourse  to  gestures  to  eke  out  the  scanty 
pittance  of  oral  discourse  that  is  mutually  intel- 
ligible. In  the  northern  part  of  Celebes,  "  in  a 
district  about  one  hundred  miles  long  by  thirty 
miles  wide,  not  less  than  ten  distinct  languages 
are  spoken."  l  In  civilized  speech  no  words  stick 
like  the  simple  numerals  :  we  use  the  same  words 
to-day,  in  counting  from  one  to  ten,  that  our  an- 
cestors used  in  central  Asia  ages  before  the 
winged  bulls  of  Nineveh  were  sculptured ;  and 
the  change  in  pronunciation  has  been  barely  suf- 
ficient to  disguise  the  identity.  But  in  the  lan- 
guage of  Tahiti  four  of  the  ten  simple  numerals 
used  in  Captain  Cook's  time  have  already  be- 
come extinct :  — 

"  Two  was  rua  ;  it  is  now  piti. 

Four  was  ha ,-  it  is  now  maha. 

Five  was  rima  ;  it  is  now  pae. 

Six  was  ono  ;  it  is  novffeae."  2 

Out  of  many  facts  that  might  be  cited,  these 
must  suffice.  The  facility  with  which  savage 
tongues  abandon  old  expressions  for  new  has 
no  parallel  in  civilized  languages,  unless  it  be  in 
some  of  the  more  ephemeral  kinds  of  slang.  It 

1  Miiller,  Science  of  Language,  6th  ed.  ii.  36. 
8   Op.  cit.  28. 

156 


A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER  TONGUE 

is  sufficiently  clear,  I  think,  that  under  such 
circumstances  a  language  will  seldom  or  never 
acquire  sufficient  stability  to  give  rise  to  mutu- 
ally resembling  derivative  dialects.  If  the  hab- 
its of  primitive  men  were  in  general  similar  to 
those  of  modern  savages,  we  need  not  be  sur- 
prised that  philologists  are  unable  to  trace  all 
existing  languages  back  to  a  common  origin.  In 
order  to  get  back  to  a  universal  mother  tongue, 
it  would  almost  seem  requisite  that  the  history 
of  mankind  should  have  begun  with  universal 
empire. 

We  shall  conclude,  I  think,  after  a  survey  of 
the  whole  matter,  that  in  speech,  as  in  other 
aspects  of  social  life,  the  progress  of  mankind 
is  from  fragmentariness  to  solidarity;  at  the 
beginning,  a  multitude  of  feeble,  mutually  hos- 
tile tribes,  incapable  of  much  combined  action, 
with  hundreds  of  half-formed  dialects,  each  in- 
telligible to  a  few  score  of  people ;  at  the  end, 
an  organized  system  of  mighty  nations,  pacific 
in  disposition,  with  unlimited  reciprocity  of 
intercourse,  with  very  few  languages,  rich  and 
precise  in  structure  and  vocabulary,  and  under- 
stood by  all  men. 

December,  1877. 


VI 

SOCIOLOGY   AND    HERO-WORSHIP 

IN  his  interesting  article  entitled  "  Great 
Men,  Great  Thoughts,  and  the  Envi- 
ronment," published  in  "  The  Atlantic 
Monthly"  for  October,  1880,  Dr.  William 
James  calls  attention  to  the  striking  analogy 
between  "  geniuses "  and  what  are  known  to 
modern  zoologists  as  "  spontaneous  variations." 
Nothing  could  be  more  satisfactory  than  the 
manner  in  which  (on  pages  444-447)  Dr.  James 
expounds  the  nature  of  this  analogy,  and  em- 
phasizes the  truly  philosophic  character  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  method  of  dealing  with  so-called  spon- 
taneous variations.  The  analogy  between  those 
variations,  on  the  one  hand,  of  which  the  zoolo- 
gist takes  cognizance,  and  on  the  other  hand 
those  "  sociological  variations  "  known  as  gen- 
iuses or  "  great  men,"  consists  essentially  in  the 
similarity  of  causal  relations  in  the  two  cases. 
Both  kinds  of  variations  may  be  described  as 
deviations  from  an  average  which  are  severally 
unaccountable.  Every  species  of  animals  or 
plants  consists  of  a  great  number  of  individuals, 
which  are  nearly  but  not  exactly  alike.  Each 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

individual  varies  slightly  in  one  characteristic  or 
another  from  a  certain  type  which  expresses  the 
average  among  all  the  individuals  of  the  species. 
Thus,  if  one  inch  be  the  average  length  of  the 
proboscis  of  a  certain  species  of  moth,  it  may 
well  be  that  of  the  million  individuals  which 
make  up  the  species  the  great  majority  have  the 
proboscis  a  little  shorter  or  a  little  longer  than 
an  inch :  in  most  instances  the  deviation  may 
not  exceed  a  hundredth  or  a  thousandth  part  of 
an  inch ;  but  there  may  be  half  a  dozen  indi- 
viduals in  the  species  which  have  the  proboscis 
as  long  as  two  inches  or  as  short  as  half  an 
inch.  So,  the  average  height  of  men  in  the 
United  States  may  be  about  five  feet  and  eight 
inches,  very  few  men  being  shorter  than  five 
feet  and  four  inches,  or  taller  than  six  feet ;  yet 
in  the  side-tents  which  accompany  that  "  great 
moral  exhibition,"  the  circus,  one  may,  for  a 
quarter  of  a  dollar,  see  giants  eight  feet  in 
height,  or  dwarfs  like  General  Tom  Thumb.  It 
is  just  the  same  with  men's  intellectual  capaci- 
ties as  with  their  physical  dimensions,  though 
the  one  cannot  exactly,  like  the  other,  be  mea- 
sured with  a  foot-rule.  In  every  community  of 
men  and  women  there  is  a  certain  average  stan- 
dard of  mental  capacity  ;  which,  in  the  case  of 
a  progressive  race  like  ours,  may  be  roughly 
described  as  that  degree  of  ability  to  meet  the 
complicated  exigencies  of  civilized  life  which 
159 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

will  leave  the  next  generation  somewhat  better 
equipped  than  their  parents  for  meeting  these 
exigencies.  Those  men  whom  we  regard  as  con- 
spicuously successful  in  life  —  using  the  term 
"  successful  "  in  no  narrow  and  mercantile,  but 
in  the  broadest  possible  sense  —  are  the  men, 
more  or  less  numerous,  whose  mental  capacity 
rises  somewhat  above  this  average  standard.  A 
like  number  of  men,  through  various  kinds  and 
degrees  of  ill  success,  reveal  a  mental  capacity 
that  is  more  or  less  below  the  average.  And 
along  with  these  numerous  moderate  variations 
from  the  common  level  we  meet  in  every  age 
with  a  few  extreme  variations,  —  men  of  giant 
intelligence,  such  as  Darwin  or  Helmholtz,  who 
rise  as  far  above  the  average  of  the  race  as  idiots 
and  cretins  sink  below  it. 

Now  the  moth  with  his  proboscis  twice  as 
long  as  the  average,  or  the  man  eight  feet  in 
height,  is  what  we  call  a  spontaneous  variation, 
and  the  Darwin  or  the  Helmholtz  is  what  we 
call  a  "  genius  ; "  and  the  analogy  between  the 
two  kinds  of  deviation  is  obvious  enough.  But 
obviously,  too,  the  individual  which  we  single 
out  as  a  spontaneous  variation  is  in  no  wise  es- 
sentially different  from  his  fellow-individuals. 
If  five  feet  and  eight  inches  be  the  normal  height 
of  a  race  of  men,  the  man  who  measures  six 
feet  is  a  variation  as  much  as  he  who  measures 
eight,  —  only  the  one  instance  does  not  attract 
1 60 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

our  attention,  and  the  other  does.  In  any  spe- 
cies whatever,  the  greater  number  of  individuals 
are  no  doubt  variations,  either  in  one  respect  or 
in  another.  Throughout  nature,  where  a  great 
number  of  mutually  balancing  forces  cooperate 
to  produce  a  set  of  results,  we  are  likely  to  find 
the  results  distributed  about  a  certain  average, 
very  much  like  the  shots  at  a  target.  A  little 
way  from  the  centre  there  is  a  spot  where  the 
shots  are  thickly  gathered ;  some  few  have  hit 
the  bull's-eye  ;  some  have  been  caught  away 
out  on  the  rim  ;  some  have  perhaps  flown  by 
without  hitting  at  all.  It  is  just  the  same  with 
the  distribution  of  sizes,  strengths,  forms,  or 
any  attributes,  physical  or  mental,  in  a  species 
of  animals,  or  in  a  race  of  men.  These  things 
all  differ,  according  to  the  general  laws  of  devi- 
ation from  an  average  ;  and  the  forces  concerned 
in  the  result  are  so  hopelessly  complicated  —  it 
is  so  utterly  beyond  our  power  to  unravel  them 
—  that  this  is  all  we  know  about  the  matter. 
We  cannot  tell  why  a  given  moth  has  a  pro- 
boscis exactly  an  inch  and  a  quarter  in  length 
any  more  than  we  can  tell  why  Shakespeare  was 
a  great  dramatist. 

I  agree,  therefore,  with  Dr.  James,  that  "  the 
causes  of  production  of  great  men  lie  in  a  sphere 
wholly  inaccessible  to  the  social  philosopher. 
He  must  simply  accept  geniuses  as  data,  just  as 
Darwin  accepts  his  spontaneous  variations." 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

The  problem  of  the  social  philosopher,  undoubt- 
edly, so  far  as  he  speculates  about  the  influence 
of  great  men,  is  to  take  them  for  granted,  and 
inquire  how  far  they  affect  the  environment,  and 
how  far  or  in  what  ways  the  environment  affects 
them.  Dr.  James  goes  on  to  assert,  with  entire 
justice,  that  the  relation  of  the  environment  to 
the  genius  in  sociology  is  strictly  analogous  to 
the  relation  of  the  environment  to  the  variation 
in  biology  :  "  it  chiefly  adopts  or  rejects,  pre- 
serves or  destroys,  in  short  selects  him."  If 
environing  circumstances  are  such  as  to  render 
an  extra  quarter  of  an  inch  of  proboscis  advan- 
tageous to  our  species  of  moths,  then  the  ten- 
dency will  be  for  the  variations  in  excess  of 
length  of  proboscis  to  survive  and  leave  off- 
spring, while  the  variations  in  the  opposite  di- 
rection are  starved  out ;  so  that  by  and  by  the 
average  in  the  length  of  proboscis  will  have 
been  shifted  by  a  quarter  of  an  inch.  It  may 
be  truly  said,  in  a  certain  sense,  that  these  moths 
which  have  varied  in  the  right  direction  have, 
by  being  preserved,  changed  the  character  of  the 
moth  society  to  which  they  belong.  Similarly 
with  the  preservation  of  the  great  man,  save 
that,  in  the  immensely  greater  complexity  of 
the  social  problem,  the  effects  are  immeasur- 
ably more  multifarious.  For  the  great  man,  says 
Dr.  James,  acts  as  a  powerful  ferment,  unlock- 
ing vast  reservoirs  of  force  in  various  directions, 
162 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

and  thus  alters  the  whole  character  of  his  en- 
vironment, very  much  as  the  introduction  of 
a  new  species  may  alter  the  characters  and  re- 
lations of  the  fauna  and  flora  throughout  a 
whole  neighbourhood.  Dr.  James  concludes, 
then,  that  "  the  mutations  of  societies  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  are  in  the  main  due  directly 
or  indirectly  to  the  acts  or  the  example  of  indi- 
viduals whose  genius  was  so  adapted  to  the  re- 
ceptivities of  the  moment,  or  whose  accidental 
position  of  authority  was  so  critical,  that  they 
became  ferments,  initiators  of  movement,  setters 
of  precedent  or  fashion,  centres  of  corruption, 
or  destroyers  of  other  persons,  whose  gifts,  had 
they  had  free  play,  would  have  led  society  in 
another  direction." 

I  am  careful  to  emphasize  these  conclusions 
of  Dr.  James,  because,  as  far  as  they  go,  they  are 
my  own,  and,  I  believe,  are  in  general  the  views 
of  that"  Spencerian  or  evolutionist  school  "  to- 
ward which  Dr.  James  seems  to  cherish  such  an 
intense  antipathy.  Perhaps  I  may  not  be  quite 
clear  as  to  what  the  Spencerian  "  school "  may 
be.  One  characteristic  of  thinkers  of  such  cali- 
bre as  Mr.  Spencer  is  that  they  do  not  so  much 
found  schools  as  bring  about  a  shifting  of  the 
intellectual  standpoint  and  an  enlarging  of  the 
intellectual  horizon  for  the  whole  contemporary 
world.  The  ideas  of  which  Mr.  Spencer  is  the 
greatest  living  exponent  are  to-day  running  like 

163 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  weft  through  all  the  warp  of  modern  thought, 
and  out  from  their  abundant  suggestiveness  have 
come  the  opinions  of  many  who  do  not  profess 
any  especial  "  allegiance  "  to  Mr.  Spencer, — 
of  many,  even,  who  are  inclined  to  scoff  at  the 
teacher,  while  all  unconscious  of  the  debt  they 
owe  him.  But  while  I  cannot  undertake  to 
make  confident  assertions  as  to  the  views  of  a 
Spencerian  school,  I  think  I  may  venture  to 
speak  with  some  confidence  as  to  the  attitude 
of  Mr.  Spencer  himself  toward  the  present  ques- 
tion. 

So  far  is  Dr.  James  from  realizing  how  closely 
he  has  been  following  in  Mr.  Spencer's  own  line 
of  thought  that  he  begins  his  paper  by  seeking 
to  use  a  certain  alleged  opinion  of  Mr.  Spencer 
as  a  "  foil  "  whereby  to  set  off  and  illustrate  the 
truth  of  his  own  statements.  The  problem  be- 
fore us  is,  "  What  are  the  causes  that  make 
communities  change  from  generation  to  gener- 
ation,—  that  make  the  England  of  Queen 
Anne  so  different  from  the  England  of  Eliza- 
beth, the  Harvard  College  of  to-day  so  different 
from  that  of  thirty  years  ago  ? "  Dr.  James 
replies,  "  The  difference  is  due  to  the  accumu- 
lated influences  of  individuals,  of  their  exam- 
ples, their  initiatives,  their  decisions."  Very 
good.  When  taken  with  the  proper  qualifica- 
tion —  which  I  shall  presently  specify  —  there 
is  nothing  in  this  reply  to  which  Mr.  Spencer 
164 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

need  offer  an  objection.  But  according  to  Dr. 
James  the  Spencerian  school  holds  that  "  the 
changes  go  on  irrespective  of  persons,  and  are 
independent  of  individual  control.  They  are 
due  to  the  environment,  to  the  circumstances, 
the  physical  geography,  the  ancestral  conditions, 
the  increasing  experience  of  outer  relations ;  to 
everything,  in  fact,  except  the  Grants  and  the 
Bismarcks,  the  Joneses  and  the  Smiths." 

Now  if  "  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and  his  dis- 
ciples "  really  maintain  any  such  astonishing 
proposition  as  this,  it  must  be  difficult  to  acquit 
them  of  the  charge  of  over-hasty  theorizing,  to 
say  the  least;  if  they  do  not  hold  any  such 
view,  it  will  be  difficult  to  avoid  the  conclusion 
that  somebody  has  been  guilty  of  over-hasty 
assertion.  To  ascertain  Mr.  Spencer's  own 
opinion,  one  cannot  do  better  than  to  read  care- 
fully the  third  chapter  of  the  little  book  on  the 
"  Study  of  Sociology."  The  subject  of  this 
chapter  is  the  "  Nature  of  the  Social  Science," 
and  the  first  general  conclusion  arrived  at  is  that 
this  science  "  has  in  every  case  for  its  subject- 
matter  the  growth,  development,  structure,  and 
functions  of  the  social  aggregate,  as  brought  about 
by  the  mutual  actions  of  individuals,  whose  natures 
are  partly  like  those  of  all  men,  partly  like  those  of 
kindred  races,  partly  distinctive"  After  this  lu- 
cid statement,  which  in  its  triple  specification 
seems  comprehensive  enough  to  include  the 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Grants  and  Bismarcks,  as  well  as  the  Joneses 
and  Smiths,  Mr.  Spencer  goes  on  to  say, 
"  These  phenomena  of  social  evolution  have  of 
course  to  be  explained  with  due  reference  to  the 
conditions  each  society  is  exposed  to,  —  the 
conditions  furnished  by  its  locality,  and  by  its 
relations  to  neighbouring  societies.  Noting  this 
merely  to  prevent  possible  misapprehensions,  the 
fact  which  here  concerns  us  is  that  .  .  .  given 
men  having  certain  properties,  and  an  aggregate 
of  such  men  must  have  certain  derivative  pro- 
perties which  form  the  subject-matter  of  a  sci- 
ence." 

A  deliberate  and  methodical  statement  like 
this,  forming  the  burden  of  half  the  chapter  in 
which  Mr.  Spencer  lays  out  the  ground  for  his 
work,  must  of  course  be  received  as  an  authori- 
tative expression  of  his  opinion.  It  will  be  ob- 
served that  Mr.  Spencer  takes  precisely  the  same 
position  as  that  which  is  taken  by  Dr.  James 
when  he  says  that  the  changes  which  go  on  in 
society  are  "  due  to  the  accumulated  influences 
of  individuals,  of  their  examples,  their  initiatives, 
their  decisions."  So  decidedly  does  Mr.  Spencer 
put  himself  in  this  position  that  it  occurs  to  him 
that  he  may  possibly  be  misinterpreted  as  ignor- 
ing the  influence  of  environing  conditions,  and 
he  therefore  adds  the  qualification  that  in  inter- 
preting social  changes  we  must  make  "  due  re- 
ference "  to  the  outward  conditions  to  which  so- 
166 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

ciety  is  exposed.  Not  even  Mr.  Spencer's  wide 
experience  of  the  infinite  possibilities  of  miscon- 
ception could  have  led  him  to  suspect  that  in 
this  instance  he  might  be  charged  with  ignoring 
the  individual  Smiths  and  Joneses  of  whom 
society  is  composed ! 

This  due  reference  to  surrounding  conditions 
is  the  qualification  to  which  I  alluded  a  moment 
ago  as  necessary  to  give  completeness  to  Dr. 
James's  statement.  When  we  say  that  the  dif- 
ference between  the  England  of  Queen  Anne 
and  the  England  of  Queen  Elizabeth  is  due  to 
the  accumulated  influence  of  the  initiatives  and 
decisions  of  individuals,  to  what  initiatives  and 
decisions  do  we  refer?  Certainly  not  to  the 
abortive  ones  ;  not  to  those  initiatives  and  deci- 
sions that  had  been  promptly  crushed  out  or 
held  in  check,  but  to  those  that  had  been  allowed 
to  develop  and  fructify  in  the  great  events  which 
make  up  the  English  history  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  In  other  words,  we  refer  to  those  indi- 
vidual initiatives  and  decisions  which  had  been 
selected  for 'preservation  by  the  aggregate  of  the 
conditions  in  which  English  society  at  that  time 
was  placed.  So  that,  even  in  stating  the  case  as 
Dr.  James  states  it,  we  find  ourselves  unable  to 
get  along  without  tacit  reference  to  the  environ- 
ment. 

It  is  true  that  in  regarding  the  changes  of  so- 
ciety from  age  to  age  as  due  to  the  cumulative 
167 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

effect  of  individual  actions  in  relation  to  envi- 
roning conditions,  one  may  nevertheless  deal 
with  the  subject  practically  in  more  than  one  way. 
One  writer  may  turn  his  attention  chiefly  to  the 
consideration  of  those  individual  variations  in 
opinion  and  conduct  which,  in  our  ignorance 
concerning  their  complex  modes  of  genesis,  we 
call  spontaneous  variations.  Another  writer  may 
be  more  deeply  interested  in  pointing  out  such 
circumstances  as  those  of  geographical  position, 
of  commercial  intercourse,  of  political  cohesive- 
ness,  by  which  the  broad  outlines  of  history  have 
been  more  or  less  determined.  The  two  points 
of  view  seem  to  me  complementary  rather  than 
opposed  to  each  other,  though  it  is  a  common 
fault  among  speculative  writers  to  ignore  the  ex- 
istence of  all  the  doors  that  cannot  be  unlocked 
with  their  own  particular  little  key.  Mr.  Bage- 
hot  —  in  that  "  golden  little  book  "  which  I  ad- 
mire as  much  as  Dr.  James  does  —  deals  more 
especially  with  the  interior  or  psychical  aspects 
of  the  causes  of  changes  in  society.  Mr.  Grant 
Allen,  on  the  other  hand,  is  deeply  impressed 
with  the  manifold  and  remarkable  ways  in  which 
the  histories  of  nations  have  been  affected  by 
their  geographical  position ;  though  by  "  geo- 
graphical position "  he  means  something  far 
more  considerable  than  that  household  drudge 
of  superficial  writers,  the  climate :  he  means  the 
entire  situation  of  a  nation,  strategic,  industrial 
168 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

commercial,  and  literary,  in  relation  to  other  na- 
tions. Mr.  Allen  attaches  so  much  value  to 
considerations  of  this  kind  that  he  is  led  to  stig- 
matize Mr.  Bagehot's  method  as  unscientific 
and  unfruitful  in  good  result.  Mr.  Bagehot,  as 
a  thinker  of  more  catholic  mind,  would  hardly, 
I  believe,  have  been  equally  ready  to  undervalue 
Mr.  Allen's  work.  As  explanations  after  the  fact 
—  which  are  pretty  much  the  only  kind  of  expla- 
nations we  can  expect  to  have  where  the  concrete 
events  of  history  are  concerned  —  speculations 
like  those  of  Mr.  Allen  are  extremely  interest- 
ing and  suggestive.  I  agree  in  the  main,  how- 
ever, with  Dr.  James  in  his  views  as  to  the 
inadequacy  of  Mr.  Allen's  method.  It  is  no 
doubt  true  that  "  no  geographical  environment 
can  produce  a  given  type  of  mind ;  it  can  only 
foster  and  further  certain  types,  .  .  .  and  thwart 
and  frustrate  others."  No  doubt,  too,  Mr.  Al- 
len makes  a  very  extravagant  statement  when  he 
says  that  "  if  the  people  who  went  to  Hamburg 
had  gone  to  Timbuctoo  they  would  now  be 
indistinguishable  from  the  semi-barbarian  ne- 
groes who  inhabit  that  central  African  metropo- 
lis ;  and  if  the  people  who  went  to  Timbuctoo 
had  gone  to  Hamburg  they  would  now  have 
been  white-skinned  merchants  driving  a  roaring 
trade  in  imitation  sherry  and  indigestible  port." 
In  reading  such  a  statement  as  this,  one  seems, 
indeed,  to  have  fallen  upon  pre-Darwinian  days ; 
l6q 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

nay,  more,  one  wonders  whether  Mr.  Allen  has 
ever  studied  as  carefully  as  he  ought  to  have 
done  the  biological  teachings  of  Mr.  Spencer 
whose  opinions  Dr.  James  quotes  him  as  re- 
presenting ! 

Mr.  Allen  has  brilliantly  illustrated  several 
points  in  connection  with  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution, more  especially  in  the  department  of  psy- 
chology ;  but  there  is  no  good  reason  why  he 
should  be  selected  for  quotation  as  the  represen- 
tative of  all  Spencerian  evolutionists,  or  why  all 
Spencerian  evolutionists  should  be  held  respon- 
sible for  Mr.  Allen's  peculiar  opinions.  The  only 
connected  outline  of  Spencerian  sociology  as  yet 
in  existence  (save  what  has  been  published  by 
Mr.  Spencer  himself)  is  that  which  is  contained 
in  the  second  volume  of  my  "  Outlines  of  Cos- 
mic Philosophy."  That  the  opinions  therein  ex- 
pressed harmonize  in  the  main  with  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's I  have  the  strongest  possible  reasons  for 
asserting.  Yet  the  line  of  thought  followed  in 
this  part  of  my  work,  and  especially  in  the  chap- 
ter on  "  Conditions  of  Progress,"  is  far  more 
closely  parallel  with  Mr.  Bagehot's  line  of 
thought  than  with  Mr.  Allen's.  Separate  pas- 
sages might  be  cited  to  the  same  effect ;  as,  for 
example,  where  it  is  said  (vol.  ii.  p.  199)  that 
the  ecclesiastical  reforms  of  Gregory  VII.  have 
—  in  their  remote  results,  of  course  —  had  more 
influence  upon  American  history  than  the  di- 
170 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

rection  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  or  the  position 
of  the  Great  Lakes.  On  the  next  page,  allud- 
ing to  Mr.  Buckle's  theory  that  the  difference 
in  Arabian  civilization  before  and  after  the  time 
of  Mohammed  was  due  to  the  difference  between 
the  soil  of  Arabia  and  that  of  Spain,  Persia,  and 
India,  I  say,  "  To  exhibit  the  utter  superficiality 
of  this  explanation,  we  have  only  to  ask  two 
questions :  First,  if  the  Arabs  became  civilized 
only  because  they  exchanged  their  native  deserts 
for  Spain,  Persia,  and  India,  why  did  not  the 
same  hold  true  of  the  Turks  when  they  ex- 
changed their  barren  steppes  for  the  rich  empire 
of  Constantinople  ?  Though  they  have  held  for 
four  centuries  what  is  perhaps  the  finest  geogra- 
phical position  on  the  earth's  surface,  the  Turks 
have  never  directly  aided  the  progress  of  civili- 
zation. Secondly,  how  was  it  that  the  Arabs 
ever  came  to  leave  their  native  deserts,  and  to 
conquer  the  region  between  the  Pyrenees  and 
the  Ganges  ?  Was  it  because  of  a  geologic  con- 
vulsion ?  Was  it  because  the  soil,  the  climate, 
the  food,  or  the  general  aspect  of  nature  had 
undergone  any  sudden  change  ?  One  need  not 
be  a  profound  student  of  history  to  see  the  ab- 
surdity of  such  a  suggestion.  It  was  because 
their  minds  had  been  greatly  wrought  upon  by 
new  ideas ;  because  their  conceptions  of  life,  its 
duties,  its  aims,  its  possibilities,  had  been  revo- 
lutionized by  the  genius  of  Mohammed.  The 
171 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

whole  phenomenon  requires  a  psychological,  not 
a  physical,  explanation."  And  again  (vol.  ii.  p. 
237),  in  speaking  of  Comte, —  a  writer  whose 
views  of  history  were  sometimes  profound, 
though  his  philosophic  position  was  diametri- 
cally opposite  to  that  of  Mr.  Spencer  and  the 
evolutionists,  —  I  say,  "  He  did  not  fall  into 
the  error  that  individual  genius  and  exertion 
are  of  little  or  no  account  in  modifying  the 
course  of  history.  He  did  not  forget  that  his- 
tory is  made  by  individual  men,  as  much  as  a 
coral  reef  is  made  by  individual  polyps.  Each 
contributes  his  infinitesimal  share  of  effort ;  nor 
is  the  share  of  effort  always  so  trifling.  Consid- 
ering the  course  of  history  merely  as  the  re- 
sultant of  the  play  of  moral  forces,  is  there  not 
in  a  Julius  Caesar  or  a  Themistokles  as  large  a 
manifestation  of  the  forces  which  go  to  make 
history  as  in  thousands  of  common  men?" 

These  views  of  mine,  as  being  the  opinions 
of  a  "  disciple  "  of  Mr.  Spencer,  may  perhaps 
be  set  off  against  those  which  Dr.  James  quotes 
from  Mr.  Allen.  They  seem  to  me  to  be  quite 
in  harmony  with  the  whole  spirit  of  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's philosophy,1  but  it  would  be  very  difficult 
to  find,  anywhere  in  Mr.  Spencer's  writings, 
anything  that  would  serve  as  a  justification  for 
Mr.  Allen's  extraordinary  statement  about  the 

I  have  since  been  assured  by  Mr.  Spencer  that  I  have 
throughout  this  argument  correctly  represented  his  position. 
172 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

Timbuctoo  negroes  and  the  merchants  of  Ham- 
burg. 

Dr.  James,  however,  does  quote  from  Mr. 
Spencer  one  passage  which  seems  to  him  to  ig- 
nore or  to  underrate  the  importance  of  indi- 
vidual initiative  as  an  agent  in  the  production 
of  social  changes.  But  when  carefully  considered 
in  connection  with  its  context,  this  passage  does 
not  appear  to  be  responsible  for  the  direful  corol- 
laries which  Dr.  James  has  deduced  from  it. 
Commenting  on  the  "great-man  theory"  of 
history,  especially  as  held  by  Carlyle,  Mr.  Spen- 
cer reiterates  in  his  peculiar  language  the  famil- 
iar criticism  that  after  all  the  great  man  is  a 
"  product  of  the  age."  "  The  genesis  of  the 
great  man,"  says  he,  "  depends  on  the  long 
series  of  complex  influences  which  has  produced 
the  race  in  which  he  appears,  and  the  social 
state  into  which  that  race  has  slowly  grown.  .  .  . 
All  those  changes  of  which  he  is  the  proximate 
initiator  have  their  chief  causes  in  the  genera- 
tions he  descended  from."  In  saying  this,  Mr. 
Spencer  does  not  imply  that  the  individual  ini- 
tiative of  the  great  man  is  of  no  account ;  nor 
does  he  imply  that  in  order  to  interpret  the  so- 
cial phenomena  of  a  given  epoch  it  is  needful 
to  seek  for  the  causes  of  the  production  of  its 
great  men  in  that  physiological  sphere  "  which 
is  wholly  inaccessible  to  the  social  philosopher ;  " 
nor  does  he  imply  that  it  was  owing  to  any  "  con- 
173 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

vergence  of  sociological  pressures  "  in  the  Eng- 
land of  1564  that  a  "  W.  Shakespeare,  with  all 
his  mental  peculiarities,"  happened  to  be  born 
at  Stratford-on-Avon,  in  that  year.  In  some 
of  those  omitted  sentences  of  the  passage  cited 
which  Dr.  James  represents  by  dots,  Mr.  Spen- 
cer indicates  very  clearly  what  he  means.  He 
reminds  us  that  by  no  possibility  could  a  New- 
ton be  born  of  Hottentot  parents,  or  an  Aris- 
totle "  come  from  a  father  and  mother  with  facial 
angles  of  fifty  degrees  ;  "  and  further  that,  even 
supposing  it  possible  for  a  Watt  to  be  born  in 
a  tribe  unacquainted  with  the  use  of  iron,  his 
inventive  genius  would  be  likely  to  effect  but 
little.  Dr.  James  himself  alleges  parallel  truths  : 
as  that  after  a  Voltaire  you  cannot  have  a  Peter 
the  Hermit,  or  that  under  the  social  conditions 
of  the  tenth  century  a  John  Stuart  Mill  would 
have  been  impossible. 

Now  the  bearing  of  these  considerations  upon 
the  question  which  Mr.  Spencer  is  discussing  is 
obvious.  If  it  be  true  that  a  genius  of  a  given 
kind  can  appear  under  certain  social  conditions, 
and  not  under  others,  as  a  Newton  among  civi- 
lized Englishmen,  but  not  among  Hottentots  ; 
or  if  it  be  true  that  a  given  genius  can  work  out 
its  results  under  certain  social  conditions,  and 
not  under  others,  as  a  Mill  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  but  not  in  the  tenth ;  then  it  follows 
that  in  order  to  understand  the  course  of  history 
174 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

from  age  to  age  the  mere  study  of  the  personal 
characteristics  and  achievements  of  great  men  is 
not  sufficient.  Carlyle's  method  of  dealing  with 
history,  making  it  a  mere  series  of  prose  epics, 
has  many  merits,  but  it  is  nevertheless,  from  a 
scientific  point  of  view,  inadequate  ;  it  does  not 
explain  the  course  of  events.  History  is  some- 
thing more  than  biography.  Without  the  least 
disrespect  to  the  memories  of  the  great  states- 
men of  Greece  and  Rome,  it  may  safely  be  said 
that  one  might  learn  all  of  "  Plutarch's  Lives  " 
by  heart,  and  still  have  made  very  little  progress 
toward  comprehending  the  reasons  why  the 
Greek  states  were  never  able  to  form  a  coherent 
political  aggregate,  or  why  the  establishment  of 
despotism  at  Rome  was  involved  in  the  conquest 
of  the  Mediterranean  world.  The  true  way  to 
approach  such  historical  problems  as  these  is 
not  to  speculate  about  the  personal  character- 
istics of  Lysander  or  C.  Gracchus,  but  to  con- 
sider the  popular  assemblies  of  the  Greeks  and 
Romans  in  their  points  of  likeness  and  unlike- 
ness  to  the  folkmotes  and  parliaments  of  Eng- 
land and  the  town  meetings  of  Massachusetts. 
Since  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 
revolution  which  has  taken  place  in  the  study 
of  history  is  as  great  and  as  thorough  as  the 
similar  revolution  which,  under  Mr.  Darwin's 
guidance,  has  been  effected  in  the  study  of  bi- 
ology. The  interval  in  knowledge  which  sepa- 
175 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

rates  a  Freeman  in  1880  from  a  Macaulay  in 
1850  is  as  great  as  the  interval  which  separated 
Dalton  and  Davy  from  the  believers  in  phlogis- 
ton. Yet  in  the  principal  works  by  which  this 
immense  change  has  been  brought  about  —  such 
as  the  works  of  Maine  and  Stubbs,  Coulanges 
and  Maurer —  biography  plays  either  an  utterly 
subordinate  part  or  no  part  at  all. 

Now  the  passage  on  the  great-man  theory, 
which  Dr.  James  quotes  from  Mr.  Spencer,  is 
a  protest  against  the  alleged  adequacy  of  the 
method  of  Carlyle.  Important  as  the  "great 
man  "  may  be,  it  is  not  his  individual  thoughts 
and  actions  which  primarily  concern  the  sociolo- 
gist. The  truths  with  which  sociology  primarily 
concerns  itself  are  general  truths  relating  to  the 
structure  of  society  and  the  functions  of  its  vari- 
ous parts ;  and  they  are  obtained  from  a  com- 
parative and  analytical  survey  of  the  actions 
of  great  masses  of  men,  considered  on  a  scale 
where  all  matters  of  individual  idiosyncrasy  are 
averaged,  and  for  the  purposes  of  the  inquiry 
eliminated.  Such  questions  as  relate  to  the 
structure  of  the  family  in  different  stages  of 
civilization,  to  the  relations  of  the  various  classes 
of  society  to  the  governing  body,  to  the  circum- 
stances which  hinder  or  favour  the  aggregation 
of  tribes  into  nations,  —  it  is  such  problems  as 
these  that  mainly  concern  the  student  of  socio- 
logy ;  and  into  such  problems  biographical  con- 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

siderations  do  not  enter,  any  more  than  they 
enter  into  the  study  of  political  economy.  Polit- 
ical economy  deals  with  the  actions  of  men  in 
great  masses  in  so  far  solely  as  the  production 
and  distribution  of  wealth  are  concerned,  and 
its  conclusions  remain  equally  true,  no  matter 
whether  a  genius  or  a  dunce  presides  over  the 
national  finances.  That  a  protective  tariff  is  an 
indirect  tax  levied  upon  an  entire  community, 
for  the  personal  benefit  of  a  few  members  of 
the  community,  is  an  economical  truth  that  is 
quite  independent  of  the  particular  financial 
schemes  or  legislative  acts  of  particular  great 
men.  So  —  to  take  one  from  that  class  of  facts 
in  political  history  with  which  the  student  of 
sociology  is  especially  concerned  —  it  is  very- 
clear  that  if  a  primary  assembly,  like  the  New 
England  town  meeting,  is  confined  within  nar- 
row geographical  limits,  so  that  people  can  easily 
attend  to  it,  it  will  be  likely  to  remain  a.folkmotey 
or  primary  assembly  ;  but  if  it  is  spread  over  a 
wide  area,  so  that  people  cannot  conveniently 
come  to  the  meetings,  it  will  tend  either  to 
shrink  into  a  witanagemote,  or  assembly  of  nota- 
bles, or  to  develop  into  a  representative  assem- 
bly. This  is  a  proposition  derived  from  our 
general  experience  of  the  way  in  which  people 
behave  under  given  conditions,  and  confirmed 
by  a  wide  historical  induction.  Yet  the  implica- 
tions of  this  simple  proposition,  when  once  fully 
177 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

unfolded,  will  go  farther  toward  explaining  the 
differences  between  Greek  and  Roman  political 
history,  on  the  one  hand,  and  English  political 
history,  on  the  other,  than  would  the  exhaustive 
biography  of  all  the  Greek  and  Roman  and 
English  statesmen  that  have  ever  lived,  from 
Lykurgos  and  Servius  Tullius  to  Gladstone. 
The  study  of  sociology,  in  short,  is  primarily 
concerned  with  institutions  rather  than  with  in- 
dividuals. The  sociologist  does  not  need  to 
undervalue  in  any  way  the  efficiency  of  individ- 
ual initiative  in  determining  the  concrete  course 
of  history  ;  but  the  kind  of  propositions  which 
he  seeks  to  establish  are  general  propositions, 
relating  to  the  way  in  which  masses  of  men  act 
under  given  conditions. 

Here,  in  conclusion,  we  may  call  attention  to 
a  broad  distinction  between  the  study  of  socio- 
logy and  the  study  of  history,  which,  when  duly 
considered,  will  throw  much  light  upon  the 
points  in  Mr.  Spencer's  doctrine  by  which  Dr. 
James  seems  to  have  been  puzzled.  The  dis- 
tinction to  which  I  allude  is  one  which  may  be 
most  fitly  illustrated  by  a  reference  to  the  study 
of  geology.  The  philosophical  geologist  as- 
sumes as  data  the  various  physical  and  chemical 
properties  of  the  substances  of  which  the  earth's 
surface  is  composed,  and  by  reasoning  from 
these  data,  with  the  aid  of  all  the  concrete  facts 
which  observation  can  gather,  he  constructs  his 
178 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

theory  of  the  actual  changes  which  the  earth's 
surface  has  undergone,  or  will  undergo,  under 
given  conditions.  In  so  far  as  his  knowledge 
of  the  physical  and  chemical  properties  of  mat- 
ter is  exhaustive,  and  in  so  far  as  his  judgment 
is  sound,  his  conclusions  with  regard  to  the 
general  course  of  geological  events  will  be  cor- 
rect. He  can  even  foretell,  in  outline,  what 
kind  of  effects  will  be  likely  to  be  produced  by 
a  given  set  of  geological  causes.  But  when  it 
comes  to  predicting,  with  minute  and  exhaustive 
accuracy,  the  geological  future  of  any  particular 
spot  on  the  earth's  surface,  he  is  foiled,  through 
inability  to  compass  all  the  conditions  of  the 
concrete  case.  And  likewise,  if  he  is  asked  to 
give  the  precise  physical  history  of  any  particu- 
lar spot  on  the  earth,  his  conclusions,  though 
sound  in  principle,  may  be  inadequate,  because 
he  may  not  have  gained  control  of  all  the  spe- 
cial facts  required  for  this  individual  case.  So, 
although  geology  is  unquestionably  a  legitimate 
science,  it  is  nevertheless  a  science  which  must 
deal  chiefly  with  explanations  after  the  fact ;  it 
can  seldom  or  never  be  possible  for  the  geolo- 
gist to  lay  down  general  principles  which  will 
be  sure  to  fit  every  case  that  may  arise. 

Just   so  with  sociology.    The  philosophical 

student  of  sociology  assumes  as  data  the  general 

and  undisputed  facts  of  human  nature,  and  with 

the  aid  of  all  such  concrete  facts  as  he  can  get 

179 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

from  history  he  constructs  his  theory  of  the 
general  course  of  social  evolution,  —  of  the 
changes  which  societies  have  undergone,  or  will 
undergo,  under  given  conditions.  If  his  work 
has  been  properly  done,  he  can  go  so  far  as  to 
foretell  what  kind  of  result  is  likely  to  be  pro- 
duced by  a  given  course  of  political  action.  But 
when  it  comes  to  predicting  the  future  of  any 
particular  society  for  the  next  ten  years,  he  is 
sure  to  be  foiled,  through  inability  to  take  in 
the  infinitely  complex  conditions  of  the  concrete 
case.  And  in  like  manner,  when  he  is  called 
upon  to  interpret  the  past  history  of  society,  he 
cannot  expect  to  do  more  than  to  render  ex- 
planations after  the  fact.  In  order  to  gain  con- 
trol, moreover,  of  all  the  special  facts  required 
for  the  interpretation  of  each  particular  case,  he 
must  take  into  account  the  personal  idiosyn- 
crasies of  the  great  men  by  whom  the  concrete 
course  of  history  has  been  determined.  For  ex- 
ample, given  the  political  constitution  of  Rome 
in  the  third  century  before  Christ,  and  the  trans- 
formation of  that  constitution  into  an  imperial 
despotism  can  be  shown  to  have  been  an  inev- 
itable consequence  of  the  conquest  of  a  large 
number  of  surrounding  nations  by  a  society  so 
constituted.  It  was  a  consequence  which  not 
even  the  practical  genius  of  Caesar  —  the  great- 
est, no  doubt,  that  has  ever  been  seen  on  the 
earth  —  could  have  possibly  averted,  had  all  its 
1 80 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

unrivalled  power  been  thrown  in  that  direction. 
But  granting  that  this  general  course  of  devel- 
opment was  inevitable,  the  future  course  of 
European  history  was  certainly  very  different, 
as  initiated  by  Caesar,  from  what  it  would  have 
been  if  initiated  by  Sulla  or  Pompeius.  When 
once  this  distinction  between  the  standpoint  of 
the  sociologist  and  the  standpoint  of  the  his- 
torian is  thoroughly  grasped,  one  can  find  no 
difficulty  in  comprehending  Mr.  Spencer's  atti- 
tude toward  the  great-man  theory.  If  the  pur- 
pose of  the  sociologist  were  to  construct  concrete 
history  from  an  a  -priori  point  of  view,  then  he 
would  undoubtedly  need  to  inquire  into  the 
mode  of  genesis  of  each  individual  genius,  and 
to  take  every  one  of  its  peculiarities  into  the 
account.  No  such  science  as  this  is  possible  to- 
day, and  it  is  not  likely  that  any  such  science 
will  ever  be  possible ;  nothing  short  of  omni- 
science could  compass  its  problems.  As  it  is, 
the  task  of  the  sociologist  is  confined  to  the  as- 
certainment of  truths  relating  to  the  actions  of 
men  in  aggregates.  It  is  for  the  historian  to 
make  use  of  such  general  truths  in  interpreting 
the  actions  of  particular  men  ;  and  it  is  the  greater 
extent  to  which  recent  historians  have  been  able 
to  employ  sociological  generalization  that  is 
making  the  historical  writing  of  to-day  so  much 
more  satisfactory  and  profound  than  the  his- 
torical writing  of  a  generation  ago.  This  in- 
181 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

creased  use  of  sociology,  this  more  frequent  and 
conscious  reference  to  the  "conditions,"  the 
"  environment,"  and  all  that  sort  of  thing,  does 
not  make  the  modern  historian  less  mindful  of 
the  reverence  due  to  great  men.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  enhances  his  appreciation  of  them 
through  his  more  profound  knowledge  of  the 
conditions  under  which  they  have  worked.  As 
an  example  I  may  refer  to  the  way  in  which  the 
life  of  Caesar  has  been  treated  respectively  by 
Froude  and  by  Mommsen.  To  both  these 
writers  Caesar  is  the  greatest  hero  that  has  ever 
lived,  and  both  do  their  best  to  illustrate  his 
career.  Both,  too,  have  done  their  work  well. 
But  Mr.  Froude  has  profited  very  little  by  the 
modern  scientific  study  of  social  phenomena, 
and  his  method  is  in  the  main  the  method  of 
Carlyle.  Mommsen,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
saturated  in  every  fibre  with  "science,"  with 
"  sociology,"  with  the  "  comparative  method," 
with  the  "study  of  institutions."  As  a  result  of 
this  difference,  we  find  that  Mr.  Froude  quite 
fails  to  do  justice  to  the  very  greatest  part  of 
all  Caesar's  work,  namely,  the  reconstructive 
measures  of  the  last  years  of  his  life,  which 
Mommsen  has  so  admirably  characterized  in  his 
profound  chapter  on  the  Old  Republic  and  the 
New  Monarchy.  Or,  if  still  more  striking  proof 
be  needed  that  the  scientific  study  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  society  is  not  incompatible  with  the 
182 


SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

highest  possible  estimate  of  the  value  of  in- 
dividual initiative,  I  may  cite  the  illustrious 
example  of  Mr.  Freeman.  Of  all  the  historians 
now  living,  Mr.  Freeman  is  the  most  thoroughly 
filled  with  the  scientific  spirit,  and  he  has  done 
more  than  any  other  to  raise  the  study  of  his- 
tory on  to  a  higher  level  than  it  has  ever  before 
occupied.  His  writings  in  great  part  read  like 
an  elaborate  commentary  on  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  —  a  commentary  the  more  valuable, 
in  one  sense,  in  that  Mr.  Freeman  owns  no 
especial  allegiance  to  Mr.  Spencer  or  to  any 
general  evolutionary  philosophy.  Yet  this  great 
historian,  whose  opinions  are  determined  every- 
where by  the  sociological  study  of  institutions, 
turns  out  to  be  at  the  same  time  as  ardent  a 
hero-worshipper  as  Carlyle  himself,  —  and 
vastly  more  intelligent. 

October,  1 880. 


VII 
HEROES   OF   INDUSTRY1 

E3T  of  all,  in  our  gallery  of  heroes,  come 
the  heroes  of  industrial  civilization,  — 
the  bold  explorers  who  have  enlarged 
the  area  of  the  civilized  world,  and  the  men  who 
by  inventive  genius  have  added  to  the  number 
and  complexity  of  the  processes  whereby  human 
wants  are  satisfied.  In  one  sense  it  was  doubt- 
less well  to  place  this  group  of  heroes  last ;  for, 
while  the  groups  of  greatest  poets  and  founders 
of  religions  carry  us  back  into  an  almost  myth- 
ical antiquity ;  and  while  art,  philosophy,  his- 
tory, science,  and  politics  have  each  and  all  of 
them  their  illustrious  representatives  in  ancient 
as  well  as  in  modern  times  ;  on  the  other  hand, 
we  find  that  all  the  discoverers  and  inventors 
who  have  been  thought  worthy  to  be  included 
among  the  hundred  greatest  men  of  history 

1  Preface  to  the  eighth  volume  of  The  Hundred  Greatest 
Men  ;  Portraits  reproduced  from  Fine  and  Rare  Engravings, 
London,  1880.  8  vols.  410.  The  eighth  volume  contains 
"  Inventors  and  Discoverers." 

I  reprint  this  "  preface  "  in   this  connection,  because  it 
affords  a  good  illustration  of  some  of  the  points  in  the  preced- 
ing essay  on  Sociology  and  Hero-Worship. 
184 


HEROES  OF  INDUSTRY 

belong  to  modern  times.  Nor  is  this  curious 
circumstance  merely  an  accident ;  on  the  con- 
trary, it  affords  an  apt  illustration  of  one  of  the 
most  striking  and  important  of  all  the  general 
aspects  of  the  history  of  civilization.  It  is  not 
true  that  industrial  art  is  later  in  its  beginnings 
than  the  arts  of  warfare  and  statesmanship,  or 
than  the  inclination  toward  scientific  inquiry. 
In  their  most  rudimentary  beginnings  all  these 
things  were,  no  doubt,  nearly  simultaneous  with 
each  other,  as  well  as  with  art,  religion,  and 
poetry.  Pre-glacial  men  scratched  outline  pic- 
tures of  reindeer  on  their  crude  stone  hammers ; 
the  first  man  who  explained  an  eclipse  as  the 
swallowing  of  the  sun  by  a  dragon,  propounded 
an  hypothesis  of  the  kind  by  which  the  begin- 
nings of  science  and  of  theology  are  alike  char- 
acterized ;  and  poetry  and  music  had  their 
humble  origin  in  tales  about  the  dead  hero,  and 
rhythmical  chants  and  dances  in  propitiation  of 
his  ghost.  And  in  like  manner  the  ingenious 
savage  of  primeval  times  who  first  discovered 
that  it  was  easier  and  safer  to  float  across  a  river 
on  a  log,  if  you  hollowed  out  the  log,  was  the 
legitimate  precursor  of  Fulton  and  Ericsson. 
But  the  names  of  the  clever  men  who  invented 
canoes  and  bows  and  arrows  are  as  utterly  un- 
known to  tradition  as  the  names  of  the  earliest 
myth-makers,  or  of  those  pre-Homeric  heroes 
who  won  for  the  Aryan  people  the  rich  heritage 
185 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  the  southern  peninsulas  of  Europe.  It  was 
only  after  civilization  had  already  made  consid- 
erable progress,  after  tribes  of  men  had  become 
united  into  large  and  stable  political  aggregates, 
and  after  the  business  of  society  had  acquired  a 
rather  high  degree  of  complexity,  that  individ- 
ual men  could  achieve  work  of  any  sort  on  a 
sufficiently  grand  scale  to  arrest  the  attention 
of  succeeding  generations  through  thousands  of 
years.  Granting  that  some  pre-Homeric  hero 
may  have  had  the  native  powers  of  a  Hannibal, 
the  fact  that  his  achievements  did  not  visibly 
affect  great  masses  of  society,  but  only  the 
movements  of  a  few  petty  tribes,  would  be 
enough  to  prevent  his  fame  surviving,  save, 
perhaps,  in  some  vague  half-intelligible  legends 
about  giants  and  demi-gods.  But  after  the  his- 
torical period,  in  the  long  career  of  nascent 
humanity,  had  fairly  begun  —  after  great  socie- 
ties had  been  formed,  with  generals  and  states- 
men, poets  and  artists,  and  even  philosophers 
—  a  long  time  had  still  to  elapse  before  any- 
thing was  heard  of  inventors  of  giant  calibre  and 
wonderful  achievements  like  Arkwright  and 
Watt.  And  this  fact  has  in  history  a  marked 
significance. 

Before  inventors  of  this  sort  were  possible,  it 
was  necessary,  in  the  first  place,  that  society 
should  have  reached  a  state  of  comparative  sta- 
bility politically.   The  ages  which  witnessed  the 
186 


HEROES  OF  INDUSTRY 

exploits  of  a  Belisarius,  a  Pepin,  or  a  Godfrey 
de  Bouillon,  were  ages  in  which  neither  a  Co- 
lumbus nor  a  Gutenberg  was  possible.  Amid 
such  chronic  political  turmojl,  there  was  no  sur- 
plus energy  which  could  be  devoted  to  the 
exploration  and  colonization  of  remote  coun- 
tries, nor  was  there  enough  security  for  industry 
at  home  to  permit  the  adoption  of  new  devices 
for  facilitating  industrial  processes.  In  the  sec- 
ond place,  it  was  necessary  both  that  commer- 
cial operations  should  have  begun  to  cover  a 
wide  geographical  range,  and  that  the  physical 
sciences  should  have  made  considerable  pro- 
gress. The  application  of  both  these  consider- 
ations to  the  case  of  a  discoverer  like  Columbus 
is  obvious  enough ;  but  both  are  equally  appli- 
cable to  the  case  of  such  an  inventor  as  Ark- 
wright.  Supposing  that  such  a  man  could  have 
been  produced,  and  could  have  invented  his 
spinning  machine  in  the  age  of  Augustus  or 
of  Trajan,  no  such  results  would  have  followed 
as  were  brought  about  a  hundred  years  ago  in 
England.  The  general  knowledge  of  machinery 
was  insufficient,  and  the  general  extension  of 
commerce  was  also  insufficient.  And  so  it  fol- 
lows, in  the  third  place,  that  when  men  of  the 
intellectual  calibre  of  Watt  and  Arkwright  were 
born  in  such  a  state  of  society  as  that  of  ancient 
Rome,  their  attention  was  turned  to  other 
things,  and  not  to  the  mechanical  arts  ;  they 
187 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

became  statesmen  or  lawyers,  poets  or  philoso- 
phers, but  not  inventors  on  a  grand  scale.  There 
was  no  lack  of  inventive  talent  on  the  part  of 
the  ancients,  especially  as  applied  to  processes 
of  warfare,  as  was  illustrated  by  the  skilful  de- 
vices with  which  the  Romans,  in  the  first  Punic 
war,  wrought  such  wholesale  destruction  on  the 
Carthaginian  fleets.  But  the  men  who  devised 
these  remarkable  engines,  though  they  effected 
an  important  temporary  purpose,  accomplished 
nothing  toward  extending  permanently  the  con- 
trol of  mankind  over  the  forces  of  nature,  or 
toward  modifying  the  career  of  industry ;  and 
so  they  are  not  remembered  among  the  great 
inventors.  The  explanation  of  the  non-appear- 
ance of  Watts  and  Arkwrights  in  ancient  times 
is  not  to  be  found,  therefore,  in  any  assumed 
lack  of  inventive  talent,  but  in  the  social  condi- 
tions which  prevailed  in  antiquity  and  down  to 
the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

But  there  is  a  still  more  striking  historic  sig- 
nificance in  the  relatively  late  appearance  of  the 
heroes  of  industry.  The  paucity  of  inventors  in 
antiquity,  and  their  increasing  frequency  in  mod- 
ern times,  serves  as  the  index  of  a  great  change 
that  has  been  slowly  taking  place  in  the  prevail- 
ing character  of  human  activity.  Whereas  the 
basis  of  civilization  was  once  mainly  military,  it 
has  now  become  mainly  industrial.  Whereas  the 
occupation  of  the  greater  part  of  mankind  was 
188 


HEROES  OF  INDUSTRY 

once  fighting  and  pillage,  it  is  now  the  peaceful 
cultivation  of  the  earth  and  the  transformation 
of  the  earth's  various  productions  into  endlessly 
complex  instruments  for  satisfying  human  wants, 
both  physical  and  Eesthetic.  Warfare  has  long 
been  necessary  for  the  purpose  of  securing  and 
maintaining  the  political  stability  of  great  masses 
of  men,  without  which  industry  itself  could  not 
attain  to  any  high  development.  From  this  point 
of  view,  warfare  has  not  yet  ceased  to  be  neces- 
sary, especially  where  civilized  societies  are  mo- 
lested or  threatened  by  barbarous  societies,  and 
no  doubt  it  will  be  a  long  time  before  warfare 
becomes  extinct ;  but,  in  spite  of  this,  the  sphere 
of  warfare  in  modern  life  has  become  very  much 
restricted.  In  such  countries  as  England  and 
the  United  States,  it  takes  up  the  time  and  at- 
tention of  only  a  very  small  part  of  the  com- 
munity, and  only  at  considerable  intervals  acts 
as  a  real  disturbance  to  the  prevailing  occupa- 
tions, which  are  almost  entirely  concerned, 
directly  or  indirectly,  with  industry.  The  enor- 
mous complication  of  modern  society,  which  has 
been  mainly  brought  about  by  the  labours  of 
industrial  discoverers  and  inventors,  in  coopera- 
tion with  scientific  inquirers,  has  brought  things 
to  such  a  pass  that  men  are  more  and  more  un- 
willing to  engage  in  warfare.  The  disturbance 
which  it  works,  though  slight  compared  with  the 
chronic  misery  which  it  inflicted  in  earlier  times, 
189 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

is  now  beginning  to  be  regarded  as  unendurable. 
And  along  with  the  diminution  of  the  quantity 
of  warfare,  and  the  restriction  of  its  sphere,  there 
has  gone  on  a  gradual  alteration  in  the  feelings 
and  in  the  manners  of  civilized  men.  This 
change  has  been  shown  in  increased  regard  for 
domestic  comfort,  in  the  abolition  of  judicial 
torture  and  of  cruel  modes  of  punishment,  in 
prison  reforms,  and  generally  in  increased  soft- 
ness of  temper  and  mildness  of  manner.  That 
this  change  is  due  to  the  general  substitution  of 
industrial  for  military  activity,  is  too  obvious  to 
require  detailed  argument ;  yet,  when  duly  con- 
sidered in  all  its  bearings,  the  connection  of  this 
change  with  human  happiness  will  be  found  to 
be  so  close  that,  even  had  nothing  else  been 
accomplished  by  the  inauguration  of  the  in- 
dustrial era,  we  should  still  have  ample  ground 
for  regarding  the  great  discoverers  and  inven- 
tors as  among  the  chief  benefactors  of  mankind. 
Though  last  in  order,  we  can  in  no  wise  rank 
them  as  least  in  noble  desert. 

November,  1880. 


I90 


VIII 
THE   CAUSES   OF   PERSECUTION 

IN  the  first  series  of  his  admirable  essays  on 
contemporary  literature,  M.  Scherer  re- 
minds us  that  in  1841  Lacordaire  wrote  a 
biography  of  St.  Dominic,  in  order  to  prove 
that  he  was  not  the  founder  of  the  Inquisition. 
"  Strange  are  the  vicissitudes  of  opinion,"  ob- 
serves the  critic.  "  The  Bollandists  saw  a  title 
of  honour  where  the  modern  Dominican  sees  a 
blemish  which  he  would  fain  wipe  away.  While 
the  former  scornfully  asked  what  there  can  be 
criminal  or  shameful  in  delivering  heretics  to 
the  torture,  Lacordaire  complains  of  the  calum- 
nies which  have  injured,  in  the  eyes  of  posterity, 
the  reputation  of  the  chief  of  his  order."  *  The 
case  is  indeed  a  striking  one  ;  but  the  vicis- 
situdes of  opinion  which  it  illustrates  are  in 
no  way  temporary  or  accidental,  but  are  symp- 
tomatic of  a  general  and  progressive  change  in 
the  tempers  and  opinions  of  civilized  men.  The 
interval  of  a  century  or  more  between  the  ear- 
lier Bollandists  and  Lacordaire  marked  a  new 
era  in  this  change  of  temper,  in  so  far  as  perse- 
1  fctudes  sur  la  litter ature  contemporaine,  i.  159. 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

cution,  while  losing  much  of  its  old  cruel  inten- 
sity, became  also  discredited  and  disavowed.  It 
was  during  this  interval  that  Lessing's  theory 
of  the  relative  truth  of  opinions,  which  de- 
stroyed the  logical  basis  of  persecution,  began 
to  make  its  way  among  cultivated  minds. 
Though  the  persecuting  spirit  has  not  yet 
ceased  to  influence  men's  actions,  it  is  no  longer 
regarded  as  a  trait  to  be  proud  of,  but  seeks  to 
hide  itself  under  specious  disguises.  Its  mani- 
festations, too,  have  become  correspondingly 
feeble.  The  heretic  who  once  would  have  been 
racked,  thumb-screwed,  and  burned  for  writing 
an  obnoxious  life  of  Jesus  is  now  only  requested 
to  resign  his  professorship  in  the  College  de 
France,  while  nobody  thinks  of  such  a  thing  as 
confiscating  the  book  or  cutting  off  from  the 
author  his  share  of  the  proceeds  of  its  immense 
sale.  The  decline  of  persecution  is  in  these  re- 
spects analogous  to  the  simultaneous  decline  in 
the  warlike  spirit.  Warfare,  once  regarded  as 
the  only  fitting  occupation  for  well-bred  men, 
has  come  to  be  regarded  not  only  as  an  intoler- 
able nuisance,  but  even  as  a  criminal  business, 
save  when  justified  on  the  ground  of  self-defence. 
And  along  with  this  change  in  the  moral  esti- 
mate of  warfare,  we  observe  that  whereas  the 
capture  of  a  town  not  long  ago  was  invariably 
followed  by  a  carnival  of  red-handed  slaughter 
and  bestial  lust,  it  is  now  thought  unfair  to  kill 
192 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

the  pigs  or  chickens  of  a  non-combatant  enemy 
without  at  least  professing  to  pay  for  them. 
These  phenomena  are  happy  symptoms  of  a 
general  improvement  in  the  way  men  think  and 
feel ;  and  they  give  one  some  reason  for  hoping 
that  in  due  course  of  time  such  ugly  things  as 
war  and  persecution  will  cease  to  be  numbered 
among  the  actual  difficulties  which  beset  human 
life. 

This  general  improvement  in  opinion  and 
temper,  when  stated  with  proper  limitations  as 
to  time  and  place,  is  admitted  by  every  one; 
and  it  has  become  an  interesting  task  to  analyze 
it  and  determine  the  various  circumstances  to 
which  it  is  due.  How  does  it  happen  that 
while  the  representatives  of  the  current  ortho- 
doxy would  once  have  roasted  you  with  pious 
exultation,  they  are  now  fain  to  content  them- 
selves with  turning  you  out  of  an  office,  and 
with  an  apologetic  air  at  that  ? 

This  question  was  incidentally  treated  by  the 
late  Mr.  Buckle,  in  the  book  which,  twenty 
years  ago,  was  so  stimulating  to  many  youth- 
ful minds.  Mr.  Buckle  laid  it  down  as  one  of 
the  cardinal  points  of  his  theory  of  history  that 
civilized  men  have  not  improved  morally  but 
only  intellectually.  That  on  the  whole  civilized 
men  manage  to  live  in  a  more  peaceable  and 
becoming  manner  than  barbarians,  he  did  not 
deny ;  but  he  thought  it  necessary  for  the  gen- 
193 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

eral  purposes  of  his  theory  to  maintain  that  this 
progress  has  been  due  entirely  to  increase  in 
knowledge,  and  not  at  all  to  improvement  in 
ethical  feeling.  His  principal  argument  in  sup- 
port of  this  thesis  is  taken  from  the  history  of 
persecution.  He  calls  attention  to  the  curious 
circumstance  that,  in  the  early  struggle  between 
Christianity  and  Paganism,  it  was  not  the  in- 
famous Commodus  and  Elagabalus,  but  the 
pure  and  upright  Marcus  and  Julian  who  per- 
secuted the  new  religion.  And  so,  in  modern 
times,  many  of  the  extremest  bigots  have  been 
distinguished  for  integrity  of  character  and  ele- 
vation of  purpose,  —  as  St.  Dominic,  Isabella 
of  Castile,  Carlo  Borromeo,  Calvin,  and  CarafFa. 
Mr.  Buckle  accordingly  argues  that  religious 
persecution  has  been  the  product  of  some  of 
the  best  impulses  of  human  nature  when  guided 
by  an  erroneous  theory  of  duty.  The  wretched 
Commodus  cared  nothing  for  religion  or  for 
anything  else  save  his  sensual  pleasures ;  and 
so  Christian  and  Pagan  were  all  one  to  him. 
But  his  noble  father,  Marcus,  had  the  interests 
of  religion  uppermost  in  his  heart ;  and  so,  in 
spite  of  his  humane  disposition,  he  felt  it  neces- 
sary to  use  violent  means  in  putting  down  such 
an  aggressive  heresy  as  Christianity  was  then 
regarded.  So,  in  later  times,  when  persecution 
was  prevalent  among  Christian  sects,  the  gen- 
eral rule  was  that  those  who  believed  in  the 
194 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

dogma  of  exclusive  salvation  were  persecutors, 
no  matter  to  what  sect  they  belonged.  Of  this 
belief,  persecution  is,  no  doubt,  under  any  cir- 
cumstances, the  natural  outcome.  He  who  be- 
lieves that  his  neighbour's  heresy  is  destined  to 
be  punished  after  death  by  excruciating  tortures 
of  infinite  duration,  will  not  scruple  to  use  the 
most  violent  means  for  rescuing  him  from  his 
perilous  condition.  Obviously,  such  a  conclu- 
sion may  be  entertained  without  sophistry. 
Once  admit  that  salvation  is  possible  only  within 
the  limits  of  your  own  sect,  and  it  may  well 
be  argued  that  you  are  bound,  in  benevolence 
if  not  in  justice,  to  compel  all  dissenters  to 
"  enter  in  "  to  that  sect.  If  persecution  be  need- 
ful to  obtain  such  an  object,  then,  on  this  view 
of  the  case,  it  would  really  be  hard-hearted  to 
refrain  from  using  it.  If  pulleys  and  thumb- 
screws can  substitute  eternal  happiness  for 
future  torments  like  those  described  by  Dante, 
then  pulleys  and  thumb-screws  are  instruments 
of  charity  and  kindness.  On  this  view  of  the 
case,  the  typical  religious  persecutor  is  a  man  in 
whom  unselfish  philanthropy  has  become  such 
an  uncontrollable  impulse  that,  no  matter  how 
great  the  violence  to  his  natural  feelings  of 
humanity,  he  will  not  hesitate  to  employ  the 
most  rigorous  and  appalling  measures  to  re- 
strain his  fellow-creatures  from  incurring  the 
risk  of  endless  misery.  Such  men  exist  to-day, 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

as  formerly,  mankind  having  remained  substan- 
tially unchanged  in  their  moral  condition.  But 
they  no  longer  use  such  rigorous  and  appalling 
means  of  constraining  the  opinions  of  their 
fellow-creatures,  because  —  for  one  thing  — 
they  have  not  the  power  to  do  so.  And  they 
have  lost  the  power  to  do  so,  because  such  a 
general  scepticism  has  come  to  pervade  the 
community  that  the  dogma  of  exclusive  salva- 
tion has  become  discredited.  The  decline  of 
persecution  has  therefore  —  according  to  Mr. 
Buckle  —  been  determined  solely  by  intellec- 
tual causes,  and  does  not  indicate  any  improve- 
ment in  the  average  character  or  advance  in  the 
ethical  knowledge  of  mankind. 

In  this  view  there  is  some  truth,  but  it  is  so 
mixed  up  with  error  that  the  total  statement  is 
of  little  worth.  That  the  growth  of  scepticism, 
or  increasing  lack  of  certainty  about  transcen- 
dental opinions,  has  had  much  to  do  with  di- 
minishing religious  persecution,  is  not  to  be 
denied.  But  that  the  average  persecutor  is  a 
man  whose  horrid  actions  are  dictated  by  an  un- 
selfish interest  in  the  welfare  of  his  fellow-men, 
is  a  much  more  questionable  proposition.  It  has 
not  been  customary  to  credit  religious  bigotry 
with  such  lofty  motives,  —  if  motives  prompt- 
ing such  atrocious  actions  can  at  all  properly  be 
called  lofty,  —  and  we  do  not  find  Mr.  Buckle 
disposed  to  be  particularly  lenient  in  his  judg- 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

ment  of  individual  persecutors,  whatever  general 
statements  the  supposed  exigencies  of  his  theory 
may  have  led  him  to  make.  When  he  comes 
to  treat  of  the  bigoted  Scotch  divines  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  he  is  only  too  ready  to 
charge  them  with  moral  perversity  as  well 
as  with  intellectual  ignorance  and  obtuseness. 
This  is  very  inconsistent ;  but  inconsistency  can 
hardly  be  avoided  when  one  starts  with  such  a 
singularly  half-true  theory  as  that  which  Mr. 
Buckle  propounded. 

Mr.  Buckle's  fundamental  error  lay  in  the 
attempt  to  assign  distinct  parts  to  elements  of 
human  nature  that  in  reality  cannot  be  sepa- 
rated. For  didactic  or  school-room  purposes  it 
is  well  enough  to  consider  separately  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  faculties  of  man.  But  when 
we  come  to  examine  concretely  any  actual  group 
of  human  phenomena,  it  is  hopelessly  futile  to 
try  to  consider  intelligence  and  moral  disposition 
as  working  separately,  or  to  assign  to  each  its 
kind  and  amount  of  effects.  In  point  of  fact 
they  never  do  work  separately,  but  their  com- 
binations are  so  manifold  and  intricate  that  the 
disentangling  of  effects  becomes  impossible. 
When  we  look  at  things  rather  than  words,  we 
see  that  every  complex  question  of  morals  is 
largely  also  a  question  of  intelligence,  and  con- 
versely. For  example,  let  us  consider  what  polit- 
ical economists  call  the  "  effective  desire  of  ac- 
197 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

cumulation."  As  a  rule  all  men  desire  to  make 
money,  or  to  increase  their  general  control  over 
the  circumstances  which  make  life  comfortable 
or  pleasurable ;  but  the  effectiveness  of  this  desire 
is  very  different  with  different  individuals,  and 
it  is  immeasurably  more  effective  in  the  case  of 
civilized  men  than  in  the  case  of  barbarians. 
The  savage  cannot  be  made  to  work  to-day  in 
anticipation  of  wants  that  are  not  actually  felt  at 
present ;  but  the  civilized  man  will  even  devote 
a  hundred  or  a  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  labour 
every  year  to  ward  off  the  mere  possibility  of  a 
loss  by  fire  which  is  by  no  means  likely  to  occur. 
This  tendency  to  provide  for  future  contingen- 
cies is  at  the  root  of  what  is  called  the  "  effective 
desire  of  accumulation,"  and  it  furnishes  one  of 
the  most  conspicuous  of  all  the  distinctions  be- 
tween civilized  men  and  savages.  The  progress 
of  mankind  in  civilization  has  been  to  a  large 
extent  identical  with  the  growth  of  this  tendency. 
But,  now,  how  far  has  this  been  an  intellectual, 
and  how  far  a  moral  progress?  On  the  one 
hand,  it  may  be  argued  that  the  ability  to  labour 
and  to  economize  to-day  in  anticipation  of  future 
contingencies  is  an  index  of  self-control  or  of 
power  to  resist  momentary  temptations  ;  and  in 
so  far  as  this  is  true,  the  increase  of  the  "  effec- 
tive desire  of  accumulation  "  is  an  index  of  the 
degree  to  which  civilized  men  have  risen  mor- 
ally above  the  dead  level  of  savagery.  But,  on 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

the  other  hand,  it  is  undeniable  that  such  a 
purely  intellectual  faculty  as  imagination  has  a 
great  deal  to  do  with  this  ability  to  anticipate 
future  emergencies.  A  savage  does  not  work 
to-day  in  order  to  keep  the  wolf  from  his  door 
next  winter,  because  he  cannot  frame  in  his  mind 
an  adequate  picture  of  what  next  winter  is  going 
to  be.  The  temptations  of  to-day  he  vividly 
realizes  ;  but  of  the  needs  of  next  winter  he  can 
form  no  mental  image  distinct  or  vivid  enough 
to  determine  his  actions.  So  with  the  careless, 
improvident  man  —  who  is  to  that  extent  a  bar- 
barian—  in  civilized  society.  No  honest  man 
would  ever  voluntarily  run  up  a  bill,  to  be  paid 
on  the  uncertain  chances  of  his  income  six 
months  hence,  if  he  could  adequately  represent 
to  himself,  in  imagination,  the  discomfort  or 
even  misery  which  after  six  months  the  bill  is 
liable  to  produce.  I  am  not  speaking  now  of 
such  pecuniary  obligations  as  are  sometimes 
thrust  upon  persons  by  circumstances  over 
which  they  have  no  discoverable  means  of  con- 
trol. I  refer  only  to  such  obligations  as  are 
commonly  incurred  in  civilized  society  through 
excess  of  unproductive  expenditure,  or  what  is 
currently  known  and  stigmatized  as  "  extrava- 
gance." The  results  of  extravagant  expenditure, 
especially  as  connected  with  the  system  of  "liv- 
ing upon  credit,"  form  a  very  large  proportion  of 
the  miseries  by  which  modern  society  is  afflicted : 
199 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

if  all  the  secrets  of  society  could  be  laid  open 
for  inspection,  we  should  perhaps  marvel  at  the 
amount  of  unhappiness  which  is  traceable  directly 
or  indirectly  to  this  cause.  Yet  the  reckless  as- 
sumption of  pecuniary  obligations  does  not  or- 
dinarily originate  in  dishonesty  of  intention. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  ordinarily  origi- 
nates in  mental  incapacity  to  form  a  distinct 
and  accurate  conception  of  the  future  results  of 
to-day's  actions,  cooperating  with  that  comfort- 
able assurance  that  things  will  somehow  or  other 
come  out  right,  which  nearly  all  men  persist  in 
cherishing.  The  lazy  belief  that  in  some  un- 
specified way  things  will  so  adjust  themselves  as 
to  prevent  the  natural  consequences  of  a  wrong 
or  foolish  act,  is  a  very  common  fallacy,  upon 
which  George  Eliot  is  especially  fond  of  com- 
menting. This  belief,  which  is  responsible  for 
so  much  imprudence  and  for  so  much  crime,  is 
itself  the  product  of  defects  that  are  partly  intel- 
lectual and  partly  moral.  It  arises  partly  from 
a  slothfulness  of  temper  which  shrinks  from  the 
discomfort  of  dealing  with  unpleasant  facts,  and 
partly  from  inability  to  think  out  complicated 
relations  of  cause  and  effect.  Thus  deeply  and 
widely  inwrought  with  every  phase  of  the  moral 
power  of  resisting  temptation  is  that  purely  in- 
tellectual power  which  we  may  call  "  represent- 
ativeness "  —  that  is,  the  power  of  forming  dis- 
tinct and  vivid  mental  pictures  of  circumstances 
200 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

which  have  not  yet  begun  to  exist,  or  are  at  any 
rate  remote  from  us  at  the  present  moment. 
Other  things  equal,  the  man  who  has  this  power 
of  "  representativeness  "  most  fully  developed 
is  most  likely  to  exhibit  self-control  amid  the 
myriad  temptations  of  life.  Yet  in  spite  of  the 
highly  composite  character  of  the  process  by 
which  the  habit  of  self-control  is  reached,  the 
result  is  a  purely  ethical  result  —  a  result  which 
we  estimate  solely  with  reference  to  its  bearing 
upon  the  welfare  of  society.  And  accordingly, 
when  we  praise  a  man  for  prudence  and  self- 
control,  we  rightly  feel  that  we  are  paying  trib- 
ute rather  to  his  moral  character  than  to  his 
intellectual  capacity. 

Such  being  the  inextricable  complication  of 
intellectual  and  moral  processes,  even  in  such  a 
comparatively  simple  case  as  that  of  "  the  ef- 
fective desire  of  accumulation,"  we  need  not  ex- 
pect to  be  able  to  deal  satisfactorily  with  such 
a  complex  affair  as  the  persecuting  spirit  without 
taking  into  the  account  both  intellectual  and 
moral  factors.  And  in  taking  both  into  the  ac- 
count, it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  what  we 
have  to  say  about  the  one  is  necessarily  incom- 
plete until  mentally  supplemented  by  what  we 
have  to  say  about  the  other. 

The  diminution  in  the  intensity  of  the  perse- 
cuting spirit  and  the  diminution  in  the  atrocity 
of  its  manifestations,  alike  furnish,  when  duly 

2OI 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

analyzed,  an  excellent  illustration  of  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  advance  of  mankind  from  a 
state  of  bestial  savagery  toward  a  state  of  refined 
civilization.  Let  us  consider  first,  for  a  mo- 
ment, the  diminution  in  the  atrociousness  of 
the  overt  acts  by  which  the  persecuting  spirit 
has  manifested  itself;  and  afterward  let  us  pro- 
ceed more  thoroughly  into  the  consideration  of 
the  underlying  causes  of  the  temper  of  mind 
which  has  led  men  to  persecute  one  another. 

In  the  lowest  stages  of  human  progress  which 
the  comparative  study  of  institutions  has  re- 
vealed to  us,  there  are  no  great  political  aggre- 
gates of  men  covering  large  areas  of  country, 
supporting  themselves  by  complex  and  multi- 
farious kinds  of  industrial  activity,  and  bound 
together  by  varied  community  of  interests,  guar- 
anteed by  laws  based  on  the  common  consent 
of  all.  Viewed  in  relation  to  what  we  now  know 
about  the  antiquity  of  the  human  race,  a  society 
like  this  must  be  regarded  as  quite  a  late  and 
elaborate  result  of  the  slow  process  of  civiliza- 
tion. In  broad  contrast  to  anything  of  this  sort, 
we  find  mankind  in  their  primitive  condition  — 
such  as  we  may  still  find  it  partially  exemplified 
in  the  institutions  of  savage  races  —  existing  only 
in  little  tribes,  supporting  themselves  almost  en- 
tirely by  predatory  occupations  quite  like  those 
by  which  bears  and  tigers  support  themselves, 
and  perpetually  fighting  with  each  other  for  the 
202 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

possession  of  the  hunting-grounds  that  insure 
their  means  of  subsistence.  In  this  primitive 
bestial  state  of  society,  there  is  nothing  like  a 
normal  state  of  peace.  The  nearest  approach  to 
peace  is  a  state  of  armed  truce.  Warfare  between 
tribes  goes  on  chronically,  the  injury  which  one 
inflicts  upon  another  being  compensated  only 
by  some  equivalent  injury  inflicted  in  revenge. 
As  all  the  foreign  policy  of  a  given  tribe  may  be 
thus  summed  up  in  perpetual  murder  of  men, 
so  its  internal  industries  may  be  mainly  summed 
up  in  the  perpetual  slaughter  of  animals  that 
serve  for  food.  Every  man  is  primarily  a  butcher. 
To  kill  something  is  the  prime  necessity  of  life. 
The  direct  infliction  of  death  or  of  physical  suf- 
fering is  the  principal  daily  occupation  of  all  the 
members  of  the  community ;  and,  as  a  correla- 
tive effect  of  all  this,  the  ability  to  meet  death 
or  to  endure  physical  suffering  without  flinch- 
ing is  one  of  the  attributes  of  a  hero  that  soci- 
ety prizes  most  highly.  The  most  complete  in- 
stance of  a  society  of  this  sort  that  has  acquired 
historic  fame  is  that  of  the  Iroquois  of  New 
York,  in  the  seventeenth  century.  But  there  is 
no  doubt  that,  in  all  the  respects  we  are  now  con- 
sidering, our  own  Aryan  ancestors  who  con- 
quered and  settled  Europe  were  substantially 
like  the  Iroquois. 

Now,  in  such  a  state  of  society  as  this,  it  is 
obvious  that  men  will  inflict  pain  without  the 
203 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

smallest  compunctions  and  upon  very  small  pro- 
vocation. The  feelings  with  which  we  regard 
to-day  the  needless  infliction  of  physical  suffer- 
ing would  be  utterly  unintelligible  to  them.  To 
such  men  murder  and  torture  are  common  in- 
cidents of  life,  which  no  more  interrupt  the  even 
tenor  of  their  ways  than  ours  are  interrupted  by 
railway  accidents.  A  man  born  in  such  a  state 
of  society  expects  to  meet  a  violent  death,  as  is 
shown  by  our  own  Norse  progenitors,  who  re- 
garded it  as  disgraceful  to  die  in  one's  bed,  — 
and  an  end  which  a  man  was  willing  to  encoun- 
ter himself  he  might  readily  be  supposed  to  be 
willing  to  inflict  upon  others.  In  this  way,  I 
think,  the  excessive  cruelty  which  characterized 
the  persecutions  of  the  Middle  Ages  is  com- 
pletely explained.  When  we  read  of  the  fright- 
ful tortures  inflicted  upon  Arabs,  Jews,  and 
Protestants  by  the  Inquisition  ;  when  we  re- 
member the  fiendish  outrages  perpetrated  by 
the  Spanish  armies  in  Holland  and  by  the  Im- 
perial armies  at  Magdeburg  ;  when  we  recollect 
that  in  Spain  an  auto-de-fe  was  one  of  the  most 
imposing  ceremonies  of  the  Church,  and  that, 
on  the  marriage  of  Philip  II.,  burning  heretics 
served  as  nuptial  torches,  we  are  at  first  inclined 
to  exclaim  that  such  cruelties  could  never  have 
been.  In  human  nature,  as  we  know  it  to-day, 
mean  and  bad  as  it  too  often  is,  we  do  not  seem 
to  find  anything  like  a  parallel  to  such  horrible 
204 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

cruelty  as  this.  It  has  been  said  that  we  need 
but  to  imagine  the  state  of  mind  which  attrib- 
uted a  similar  course  of  action  to  Eternal  Jus- 
tice, and  conceived  it  as  part  and  parcel  of  the 
essential  order  of  the  universe,  to  render  all  this 
explicable.  No  doubt  the  self-same  ingenuity 
which  men  displayed  speculatively  in  theologi- 
cal descriptions  of  the  next  world  was  also  dis- 
played practically  in  such  inventions  as  the  rack 
and  the  boot,  the  Virgin  armed  with  knives,  or 
the  cell  whose  walls  gradually  approached  each 
other  and  crushed  the  wretched  prisoner  into  a 
jelly.  It  is  significant,  too,  that  execution  by 
fire  was  openly  defended  as  being  symbolical 
of  the  everlasting  punishment  destined  for  the 
heretic  hereafter.  At  the  execution  of  the  lad 
William  Hunter,  in  1555,  as  the  fagots  were 
set  on  fire  one  of  the  attendant  priests  ex- 
claimed, "  Behold,  as  thou  burnest  here,  so  shalt 
thou  burn  in  hell !  " 

To  cite  the  atrocious  theology,  however,  as 
the  sufficient  explanation  of  the  atrocious  be- 
haviour, would  be,  I  think,  to  invert  the  rela- 
tions of  cause  and  effect,  —  in  homely  phrase, 
to  get  the  cart  before  the  horse.  It  was  only  in 
a  cruel  age  that  the  doctrine  of  hell-fire  could 
have  acquired  that  hold  upon  men's  minds 
which  it  had  acquired  in  the  Middle  Ages.  In 
recent  times  the  doctrine  has  become  almost 
universally  discredited  throughout  the  more  en- 
205 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

lightened  portions  of  Christendom.  Even  those 
who  maintain  a  belief  in  some  kind  of  endless 
punishment,  no  longer  insist  literally  upon  the 
lake  of  brimstone  and  the  fire  that  is  never 
quenched.  Now,  the  doctrine  of  hell-fire  has 
become  thus  universally  discredited,  not  because 
it  has  been  scientifically  disproved,  for  science 
has  neither  data  nor  methods  whereby  to  dis- 
prove such  a  doctrine  ;  nor  because  it  has  been 
exegetically  shown  to  be  unsupported  by  Scrip- 
ture, for  the  ingenuity  of  orthodox  exegesis  has 
always  been  equal  to  the  task  of  making  Scripture 
mean  whatever  is  required ;  it  has  been  discred- 
ited simply  because  people  have  become  milder 
in  their  manners  and  less  used  to  enduring  and 
inflicting  physical  pain.  The  doctrine  shocks 
people's  feelings,  and  so  they  refuse  to  believe 
it,  no  matter  how  the  logic  of  the  case  may  stand. 
The  sermons  of  Theodore  Parker  on  the  popu- 
lar theology  well  illustrate  the  change  of  mood 
that  has  come  over  men's  minds  with  reference 
to  the  justice  of  God  :  the  whole  burden  of  these 
discourses  is  the  argument  that  the  infliction  of 
endless  suffering  on  the  creature  is  incompatible 
with  infinite  justice  on  the  part  of  the  Creator. 
That  such  an  argument  appears  sound  to-day, 
whereas  it  would  have  seemed  absurd  to  the 
contemporaries  of  Luther,  is  due  to  the  self- 
same widening  and  deepening  of  human  sympa- 
thies that  have  put  an  end  to  slavery  and  to 
206 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

judicial  torture,  that  have  done  away  with  the 
horrors  of  Bedlam  and  the  "  stone-hold  "  of 
Newgate,  and  that  have  embodied  in  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States  the  injunction 
that  "  cruel  and  unusual  punishment "  must  not 
be  inflicted  upon  criminals. 

Now,  this  general  increase  in  humanity  which 
is  discernible  throughout  the  most  advanced 
regions  of  Christendom  during  the  past  three 
centuries,  and  which  has  become  especially  con- 
spicuous in  our  own  time,  is  undoubtedly  con- 
sequent upon  the  vast  increase  of  industrial  at 
the  expense  of  military  activity  which  has  char- 
acterized the  same  period.  With  the  gradual 
aggregation  of  men  into  great  and  stable  com- 
munities, and  with  the  accompanying  increase 
in  the  complexity  of  social  life  and  in  the  num- 
ber of  wants  which  labour  is  required  to  satisfy, 
the  sphere  of  industry  has  become  immensely 
enlarged  and  the  sphere  of  warfare  has  become 
correspondingly  restricted.  I  do  not  forget  that 
great  and  terrible  wars  still  occur,  but  it  remains 
none  the  less  true  that  fighting  has  ceased  to  be 
recognized  as  the  principal,  or  even  as  a  very 
considerable,  part  of  the  business  of  society. 
Private  warfare,  once  universal  and  incessant 
throughout  western  Europe,  has  become  ex- 
tinct, and  in  the  Northern  States  of  the  Ameri- 
can Union  it  has  never  existed.  Brigandage 
survives  only  in  out  of  the  way  corners  of  the 
207 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

most  backward  countries  of  Christendom,  such 
as  Spain  and  Sicily,  or  else  in  localities  where 
civilization  comes  into  geographical  contact  with 
barbarism,  as  in  Thessaly  and  Albania,  or  on  the 
extreme  western  frontiers  of  our  own  country. 
Duelling  has  become  nearly  obsolete,  and  is 
dealt  with  as  a  crime,  while  the  so-called  code 
of  honour  upon  which  it  thrived  has  become 
an  object  of  general  derision.  The  sword  is  no 
longer  a  part  of  a  gentleman's  wardrobe,  and 
laws  are  framed  to  prevent  the  carrying  of 
daggers  and  pistols.  Only  soldiers  on  parade 
and  sportsmen  nowadays  carry  deadly  weapons 
openly.  While  the  sportsmanship,  moreover, 
which  simply  inflicts  death  on  bird  or  beast  is 
still  held  in  esteem,  emphatic  protests  are  made 
against  the  sportsmanship  which  wantonly  in- 
flicts pain,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  controversy 
about  fox-hunting  between  Mr.  Freeman  and 
Mr.  Trollope.  Organized  societies  exist  for  the 
protection  of  domestic  animals  against  cruel 
treatment.  Even  where  it  is  necessary  to  inflict 
pain  for  the  purpose  of  preserving  life,  as  in  the 
profession  of  the  surgeon,  we  do  all  in  our  power, 
by  the  use  of  anaesthetics,  to  reduce  the  pain  to 
a  minimum.  And  even  where  it  is  necessary  to 
inflict  death  as  a  means  of  protection  to  life,  as 
in  the  execution  of  murderers,  the  dreadful  work 
is  done  as  gently  as  possible,  and  is  kept  hidden 
from  the  gaze  of  the  public. 
208 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

It  has  thus  come  to  pass  that,  in  such  commu- 
nities as  England  and  our  own  Northern  States, 
the  majority  of  individuals  may  live  all  their  lives 
without  ever  being  called  upon  to  take  part  in 
putting  a  fellow-creature  to  death.  Most  of  us,  I 
presume,  have  never  witnessed  a  violent  death, 
and  know  of  such  things  only  by  hearsay  —  only 
by  reading  the  newspapers  and  books  of  history. 
The  consequence  is  that  a  kind  of  feminine  soft- 
ness has  come  over  our  tempers  —  a  tenderness 
which  shrinks  from  the  very  thought  of  death 
and  suffering  purposely  inflicted  as  intolerable. 
In  military  ages  any  approach  to  such  softness 
of  temper  was  stigmatized  as  unmanly,  and  such 
a  type  of  character  could  not  flourish,  because 
it  was  unsuited  to  the  conditions  of  life  in  a 
perpetually  belligerent  community  ;  but  in  our 
own  industrial  age  this  mild  type  of  character  is 
fostered  by  all  the  potency  of  public  approval. 
But  it  is  not  only  by  restricting  the  sphere  of 
warfare  that  our  complex  industrial  civilization 
has  nourished  a  temper  that  shrinks  from  the 
infliction  of  pain.  Productive  activity  has  oper- 
ated in  this  way  directly,  as  well  as  indirectly 
through  restraining  destructive  activity.  Social 
life  has  lost  the  half-brutal,  half-ascetic  aspect 
befitting  ages  when  life  was  for  high  and  low 
little  more  than  a  struggle  for  existence.  It  is  a 
trite  remark  that  the  American  labourer  to-day 
possesses  many  physical  comforts  which  a  medi- 
209 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

seval  king  was  unable  to  secure.  Throughout 
the  greater  part  of  civilized  society,  the  struggle 
nowadays  is  not  for  the  bare  means  of  subsist- 
ence, but  for  the  attainment  of  a  certain  amount 
of  elegance  and  luxury.  The  contrast  is  great 
between  the  mediaeval  baron  who,  in  time  of 
peace,  had  no  resources  but  in  hunting  or  in 
tournaments,  or  in  getting  drunk,  and  the  mod- 
ern citizen  with  his  theatre  and  opera,  his  lec- 
tures and  concerts,  his  novels  and  magazines 
lying  on  the  table,  his  household  pictures  and 
bric-a-brac,  his  hours  of  work  at  his  office  or  in 
the  stock-exchange,  relieved  by  the  quiet  do- 
mestic enjoyment  of  the  evening.  Accustomed 
to  all  this  complicated  comfort,  our  growing 
tendency  to  shrink  from  needlessly  encounter- 
ing with  what  is  disagreeable  is  still  further 
enhanced,  and  this  tendency  produces  a  visible 
effect  upon  our  manners.  Whatever  savours  of 
personal  contention,  whatever  is  liable  to  wound 
the  feelings  or  disgust  the  senses,  is  peremptorily 
proscribed  in  the  usages  of  polite  society.  Com- 
pared with  English  and  American  gentlemen 
of  to-day,  the  gentlemen  of  Shakespeare's  plays 
often  talked  like  boors  or  ruffians. 

The  diminution  in  the  atrociousness  of  perse- 
cution, then,  is  simply  one  among  a  hundred 
illustrations  of  the  change  in  men's  tempers 
that  has  been  wrought  by  the  change  in  men's 
occupations  which  has  characterized  the  growth 
210 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

of  modern  society.  From  being  predominantly 
warlike  and  predatory,  human  activity  has  come 
to  be  predominantly  pacific  and  industrial,  and 
out  of  this  change  have  grown  our  milder  be- 
liefs as  well  as  our  milder  manners. 

We  have  not  yet,  however,  got  to  the  bottom 
of  the  matter.  We  have  accounted  for  the  de- 
crease in  the  cruelty  with  which  the  persecuting 
spirit  has  manifested  itself,  but  we  have  now  to 
consider  the  underlying  causes  of  the  temper  of 
mind  which  has  led  men  to  persecute  one  an- 
other ;  we  have  to  show,  in  particular,  how  it  is 
that,  so  far  as  all  matters  of  religious  belief  are 
concerned,  the  persecuting  spirit  has  already 
greatly  diminished  in  intensity,  and  will  no  doubt 
eventually  become  extinct  among  civilized  men. 
We  shall  find  that  the  change  is  deeply  inwrought 
with  the  progress  of  mankind,  both  morally  and 
intellectually. 

The  persecuting  spirit  has  its  origin  morally 
in  the  disposition  of  man  to  domineer  over  his 
fellow-creatures,  intellectually  in  the  assumption 
that  one's  own  opinions  are  infallibly  correct. 
We  know  very  well  how  children  are  apt  to  be- 
have when  arguing  some  question  of  no  great 
consequence.  Their  little  passions  warming 
with  the  discussion,  they  pass  from  argument  to 
abuse,  they  call  each  other  hard  names,  and,  at 
last,  they  begin  to  pound  each  other.  Most  peo- 
ple, I  imagine,  must  have  had  experiences  of 

211 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

this  sort  in  their  childhood.  I  recollect,  when 
quite  a  little  boy,  coming  to  blows  with  a  school- 
mate over  the  question  whether  Napoleon  really 
won  the  battle  of  Eylau.  Now  the  spirit  which 
prompts  a  child  to  pound  his  companion  who 
resists  him  in  argument  is  identical  with  the 
spirit  which  prompts  a  man  to  calumniate,  tor- 
ture, burn,  or  otherwise  put  down  and  injure 
his  neighbour  who  refuses  to  reverence  the 
things  which  he  himself  deems  sacred.  The 
more  we  reflect  upon  it  the  more  we  shall  be 
convinced  that  at  bottom  the  feeling  is  the  same 
in  the  two  cases,  though  in  the  latter  it  is  ac- 
companied and  disguised  by  other  feelings. 
Now,  what  is  this  feeling  but  the  disposition  to 
domineer,  to  assert  one's  own  personality  at  the 
expense  of  neighbouring  personalities,  —  a  dis- 
position eminently  characteristic  of  the  brute 
and  of  the  savage,  but  less  and  less  characteris- 
tic of  man  as  he  becomes  more  and  more  civi- 
lized ?  Bearing  this  in  mind,  and  remembering 
the  fable  of  the  wolf  and  the  lamb  —  remember- 
ing that  a  strong  passion  is  never  at  a  loss  for 
reasons,  and  that  no  one  is  more  thoroughly  the 
dupe  of  the  false  reasons  than  the  man  himself 
who  is  under  the  control  of  the  strong  passion 
—  remembering  this,  one  has  the  key  to  a  large 
part  of  the  history  of  persecution.  The  paradox, 
as  regards  the  "  benevolent  persecutors,"  is  a 
paradox  no  longer.  It  becomes  explicable  how 

212 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

a  man  may  sincerely  believe  himself  to  be  doing 
God  service,  while  he  is  in  reality  obeying  an 
impulse  which,  in  an  ultimate  analysis,  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  the  impulse  to  domineer 
over  one's  fellow-creatures.  Thus,  though  the 
plea  of  mistaken  benevolence  may  now  and 
then  be  properly  urged  in  extenuation  of  certain 
special  acts  of  persecution,  it  cannot  excuse  per- 
secution, or  obscure  the  fact  that  its  diminution 
is  largely  due  to  a  slow  moral  progress,  —  to 
a  decrease  in  self-assertion,  and  a  concomitant 
increase  in  respect  for  the  rights  of  other  peo- 
pie. 

Very  closely  connected  with  this  moral  root 
of  the  persecuting  spirit  in  mere  arrogant  self- 
assertion  is  its  intellectual  root,  in  the  assump- 
tion that  one's  own  opinions  are  infallible.  That 
persecution  can  have  no  theoretical  basis  or  jus- 
tification, save  on  the  assumption  that  some- 
body's opinions  are  infallibly  true,  has  been  so 
thoroughly  illustrated  by  Mr.  Mill  in  his  beau- 
tiful essay  on  "  Liberty,"  that  I  need  not  dwell 
hereupon  this  part  of  the  subject.  It  behooves 
us,  however,  to  consider  in  what  ways  the  pro- 
gress of  civilization  has  contributed  to  weaken 
the  spirit  of  self-assertion  and  the  assumption 
of  infallibility. 

Obviously,  the  disposition  to  domineer  over 
others,  to  assert  one's  own  personality  at  the 
expense  of  others,  is  simply  one  particular  phase 
213 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  the  disposition  to  kill  one's  enemies  which 
characterizes  human  society  in  its  primeval 
stages  of  development.  It  is  a  temper  of  mind 
which  was  favoured  by  the  general  condition  of 
things  when  there  were  no  political  aggregates 
larger  than  simple  tribes  which  were  chronically 
at  war  with  one  another.  What  I  have  said 
above,  in  considering  the  effects  upon  the  atro- 
city of  persecution  of  the  substitution  of  a  nor- 
mal state  of  peace  for  a  normal  state  of  warfare, 
will  also  apply  to  the  present  case.  The  dispo- 
sition to  domineer  over  your  fellow-man  —  to 
make  him  obey  you  or  assent  to  your  opinions, 
whether  he  will  or  no  —  is  only  an  evanescent 
phase  of  the  disposition  to  kill  him  if  he  inter- 
feres in  any  way  with  the  accomplishment  of 
your  purposes  in  life.  The  very  same  diminu- 
tion in  the  sphere  of  military  activity,  attendant 
upon  the  aggregation  of  men  into  great  and 
complex  political  societies,  which  we  found  to 
explain  the  decreasing  atrocity  of  persecution, 
explains  also  the  decreasing  vitality  of  its  moral 
foundation  in  the  disposition  to  domineer  over 
one's  fellow-men. 

The  weakening  of  the  assumption  of  infalli- 
bility in  one's  own  opinions  is  manifestly  a 
consequence  of  the  same  set  of  cooperating 
causes.  When  one's  life  is  extremely  simple 
and  monotonous,  consisting  of  very  few  expe- 
riences that  are  perpetually  repeated  ;  when  one 
214 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

is  not  often  compelled  to  test  the  validity  of 
one's  own  conclusions  by  comparing  them  with 
the  different  conclusions  which  other  people 
draw  from  the  same  data  ;  when  one  lives  amid 
a  certain  group  of  beliefs,  customs,  and  observ- 
ances that  are  never  brought  into  comparison 
(save,  perhaps,  in  exterminating  warfare)  with 
other  differing  groups  ;  —  under  such  condi- 
tions as  these  it  is  noticeable  that  one's  opinions 
are  formed  with  great  promptness,  and  when 
once  formed  are  unchangeable.  These  are  the 
conditions  under  which  the  opinions  of  savages 
are  formed,  and  the  chief  characteristic  in  the 
opinions  of  savages  is  their  wonderful  rigidity ; 
you  can  no  more  change  them  than  you  could 
teach  a  fox,  when  chased  by  the  hunter,  to 
climb  a  tree  like  a  cat.  Or,  consider  the  case 
of  an  ignorant  woman,  in  the  lower  classes  of 
civilized  society.  Her  opinions  about  men  and 
things  are  formed  in  an  instant,  by  some  men- 
tal process  of  which  she  can  render  no  account, 
and  when  once  formed  are  utterly  impervious 
to  fact  or  to  argument.  She  acts  on  the  tacit 
assumption  that  she  is  infallible,  precisely  as 
the  savage  acts.  To  think  of  hesitating  for  a 
moment  and  questioning  the  validity  of  their 
opinions,  is  something  which  never  happens 
to  either  of  them. 

This  is  the  obstinate  fashion  in  which  men 
used  to  cling  to  their  opinions  in  that  crude  state 
215 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  social  development  in  which  each  little  soci- 
ety was  at  war  with  every  other,  and  in  which, 
accordingly,  it  was  impossible  to  bring  a  given 
set  of  opinions  into  free  contact  with  another 
set,  within  the  limits  of  one  and  the  same  soci- 
ety. As  men  have  gradually  been  brought  to- 
gether into  great  and  complex  societies,  as  their 
opinions  have  been  brought  more  and  more 
into  the  focus  of  a  common  point  of  compari- 
son, this  rigidity  of  the  mental  processes — so 
like  the  rigidity  of  the  mental  processes  of  the 
lower  animals  —  has  gradually  yielded  to  cir- 
cumstances such  as  favour  flexibility.  With  the 
case  of  the  savage  or  the  woman  who  comes  to 
scrub  the  floor,  contrast  the  case  of  the  scien- 
tific philosopher,  whose  opinions  are  slowly 
formed  after  a  long  and  careful  weighing  of  con- 
flicting evidences,  and  when  once  formed  are 
held  subject  to  perpetual  revision  and  modifica- 
tion. On  considering  these  two  contrasted  cases, 
it  becomes  obvious  how  the  aggregation  of  men 
into  great  and  complex  societies,  bringing  with 
it  increased  variety  of  experience  and  increased 
knowledge  of  the  manifold  liability  to  error,  has 
operated  to  destroy  the  confident  assumption  of 
infallibility  which  characterizes  the  bigot  and  the 
savage. 

We  have  now  made  out,  I  think,  a  very  fair 
explanation  of  the  way  in  which  the  persecuting 
spirit  has  been  affected  by  the  general  progress 
216 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

of  human  society.    But  one  of  the  deepest  con- 
siderations of  all  still  remains  to  be  treated. 

In  the  early  stages  of  society,  as  illustrated 
by  such  writers  as  Sir  Henry  Maine,  the  unit 
of  society  is  not  the  individual,  but  the  family 
or  clan.  In  a  tribe  of  primitive  savages  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  individual  rights  or  individual 
obligations,  in  the  modern  sense.  It  is  the  clan 
as  a  whole  that  incurs  obligations  and  asserts  its 
rights  as  far  as  it  is  concerned  with  adjacent 
clans.  Amid  the  pressing  interests  of  the  tribe, 
in  the  fierce  struggle  for  existence,  the  individ- 
ual has  no  chance  whatever  for  especial  consid- 
eration. The  traces  of  this  state  of  things  con- 
front us  continually  as  we  study  ancient  history, 
where  no  fact  is  more  conspicuous  than  the 
utterly  ruthless  way  in  which  the  individual  is 
sacrificed  to  the  state.  The  bearing  of  this  state 
of  things  upon  the  history  of  persecution  goes 
farther  than  anything  else  toward  explaining 
that  dreadful  history.  In  the  early  stages  of 
society,  when  only  small  political  aggregates 
have  been  formed,  and  when  each  little  aggre- 
gate is  perpetually  struggling  for  its  life  with 
adjacent  aggregates,  the  only  kind  of  responsi- 
bility known  to  the  tribe  is  corporate  respon- 
sibility. The  tribe,  as  a  whole,  is  held  to  be 
responsible  corporately  for  the  acts  of  each  of 
its  members,  and  hence  it  is  necessary  that  the 
acts  and  beliefs  of  every  one  of  the  members 
217 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

should  be  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  tribe. 
If  any  one  individual  does  something  that  is 
displeasing  to  the  gods,  the  whole  tribe  is  liable 
to  be  punished  for  the  misdeed  of  this  one  per- 
son. This  feeling  was  universal  in  ancient  soci- 
ety, and,  until  we  realize  how  intense  it  was,  we 
shall  be  unable  to  understand  some  of  the  most 
remarkable  scenes  of  ancient  history.  Take, 
for  example,  the  frantic  excitement  which  was 
stirred  up  in  Athens,  just  before  the  expedition 
against  Syracuse,  by  the  mutilation  of  the  rude 
wayside  statues  of  Hermes.  It  is  impossible 
for  a  modern  man  to  understand  this  furious 
excitement  unless  he  duly  considers  the  fact 
that,  in  the  minds  of  the  Athenians,  the  whole 
community  —  and  not  merely  the  individual 
criminals  concerned  —  was  responsible  to  the 
gods  for  this  outrage.  The  whole  community 
might  be  visited  by  the  angry  gods  with  famine 
and  plague  because  of  the  misdeeds  of  a  few  of 
its  graceless  members. 

This  intense  feeling  of  corporate  responsi- 
bility pervades  all  the  life  of  ancient  society, 
and  by  keeping  it  in  mind  we  shall  understand 
many  occurrences  which  without  this  key  we 
should  find  incomprehensible.  When  we  be- 
think ourselves  how  far  such  deeply  rooted 
feelings  propagate  themselves  in  history,  we 
shall  be  inclined,  I  think,  to  find  in  this  sense 
of  corporate  responsibility  the  weightiest  cause 
218 


THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION 

of  those  deeds  of  persecution  which  have  made 
history  hideous.  To  remove  the  heretic,  lest 
God  curse  us  all  for  his  sake,  —  this  no  doubt 
has  been  the  feeling  that,  more  than  any  other, 
has  justified  the  use  of  racks  and  thumb-screws. 
But  with  the  progress  of  society  toward  wider 
ind  wider  political  aggregation,  and  toward 
greater  and  greater  political  stability,  —  along 
with  the  growing  complexity  of  industrial  pro- 
cesses, and  along  with  the  partial  elimination 
of  warfare,  —  there  has  slowly  grown  up  a  feel- 
ing that  it  is  the  individual,  and  not  the  tribe 
or  the  society,  that  is  ultimately  responsible  for 
the  individual's  opinions  on  matters  of  religion. 
Whatever  we  may  think  to-day  about  the  results 
or  the  method  of  Mr.  Robert  Ingersoll,  we  cer- 
tainly do  not  entertain  the  dread  that  because 
of  Mr.  Ingersoll's  crude  opinions,  or  his  in- 
trusive manner  of  expressing  them,  we  are  in 
danger  of  a  famine,  a  plague,  or  a  civil  war  next 
year.  The  aggregation  of  small  communities 
into  great  nations,  and  the  growing  complexity 
of  the  industrial  processes  by  which  great  na- 
tions are  sustained,  have  entirely  obliterated  in 
our  minds  the  recollection  of  the  kinds  of  belief 
and  the  kinds  of  moral  obligation  which  charac- 
terized the  primitive  tribal  communities.  The 
phase  of  feeling  characteristic  of  the  primitive 
community  showed  itself  all  through  the  Middle 
Ages.  In  the  following  paper  I  shall  show  how 
219 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  beginnings  of  modern  history  were  signal- 
ized by  the  revolt  of  Luther  against  the  doc- 
trine of  corporate  responsibility  for  opinion,  and 
against  the  assumption  of  infallibility  on  the  part 
of  a  special  body  of  men. 

November,  1880. 


220 


IX 

THE  ORIGINS  OF   PROTESTANISM 

IN  the  year  1609  one  of  the  most  atrocious 
crimes  of  which  history  preserves  the  record 
was  perpetrated  by  the  Spanish  government. 
The  Moriscoes,  or  Christianized  descendants  of 
the  conquered  Moors,  had  long  been  objects  of 
suspicion  and  hatred  to  the  Spaniards,  and  es- 
pecially to  the  Spanish  clergy.  During  the  six- 
teenth century  they  had  been  so  cruelly  treated 
that  in  1568  they  had  risen  in  rebellion  among 
the  mountains  of  Granada,  and  it  had  taken 
three  years  of  obstinate  fighting  to  bring  them 
to  terms.  Their  defeat  was  so  crushing  that  it 
was  no  longer  possible  to  regard  them  as  politi- 
cally dangerous,  but  their  orthodoxy  was  strongly 
suspected,  inasmuch  as  the  grandparents  of  the 
present  generation  had  been  converted  to  Chris- 
tianity only  by  brute  force.  In  1602  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Valencia  proposed  that  all  the  Moris- 
coes in  the  kingdom,  with  the  exception  of 
children  under  seven  years  of  age,  should  be 
forthwith  driven  into  exile,  that  the  nation  might 
no  longer  be  polluted  by  the  slightest  suspicion 
of  unbelief.  The  Archbishop  of  Toledo,  pri- 

221 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

mate  of  Spain,  heartily  agreed  with  his  reverend 
brother,  save  as  far  as  concerned  the  little  chil- 
dren, whom  he  thought  should  be  included  in 
the  general  banishment.  To  Bleda,  the  famous 
Dominican,  even  these  measures  seemed  insuf- 
ficient, and  he  argued  that  all  the  Moriscoes  in 
Spain  —  men,  women,  and  children  even  to  the 
new-born  babe  —  should  be  ruthlessly  mur- 
dered, "  because  it  was  impossible  to  tell  which 
of  them  were  Christians  at  heart,  and  it  was 
enough  to  leave  the  matter  to  God,  who  knew 
his  own,  and  who  would  reward  in  the  next 
world  those  who  were  really  Catholics."  The 
views  of  the  Archbishop  of  Toledo  finally  pre- 
vailed, and  in  1609,  as  Mr.  Buckle  puts  it, 
"  about  one  million  of  the  most  industrious  in- 
habitants of  Spain  were  hunted  out  like  beasts, 
because  the  sincerity  of  their  religious  opinions 
was  doubtful."  Their  deportation  to  Morocco 
was  attended  by  characteristic  barbarities.  The 
number  of  those  massacred  on  the  way  seems  to 
have  exceeded  the  number  of  the  victims  of 
St.  Bartholomew ;  while  of  those  who  reached 
Africa,  thousands  were  enslaved  by  Mohamme- 
dan Moors,  or  slain  by  robbers,  or  starved  in 
the  desert. 

Now  these  Moriscoes,  thus  driven  from  the 
land  by  ecclesiastical  bigotry,  were  the  most 
skilful  labourers  Spain  possessed.  By  their  ex- 
pulsion the  manufacture  of  silk  and  paper  was 

222 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

destroyed,  the  cultivation  of  sugar,  rice,  and 
cotton  came  to  an  end,  the  wool-trade  stopped, 
and  irrigation  of  the  soil  was  discontinued.  The 
disturbance  of  industry  and  the  consequent  dis- 
tress were  so  great  and  so  far-reaching  that  by 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  popu- 
lation of  Madrid  had  decreased  by  one  half,  and 
that  of  Seville  by  three  quarters  ;  whole  villages 
were  deserted,  large  portions  of  the  arable  land 
went  out  of  cultivation,  and  brigandage  gained 
a  foothold  which  it  has  ever  since  kept.  In 
short,  the  economic  ruin  of  Spain  may  be  said 
to  date  from  the  expulsion  of  the  Moriscoes  : 
after  nearly  three  hundred  years  the  country 
has  not  yet  recovered  from  the  disastrous  effects 
of  that  unparalleled  crime  and  blunder. 

Yet  this  atrocious  deed  was  done  with  the 
unanimous  approval  of  the  Spanish  people. 
Even  the  gentle-hearted  and  high-minded  Cer- 
vantes applauded  it,  while  Davila  characterized 
it  as  the  most  glorious  event  in  all  Spanish  his- 
tory. Nay,  even  in  recent  times,  the  eminent 
historian  Lafuente,  while  recognizing  the  ter- 
rible economic  results  of  the  measure,  maintains 
that  it  was  nevertheless  productive  of  immense 
benefit  by  securing  the  "  religious  unity  "  of 
the  whole  people.  Here  we  have  the  true 
Spanish  idea  —  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  the 
true  ecclesiastical  idea,  which,  through  an  un- 
fortunate combination  of  circumstances,  has  al- 
223 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ways  dominated  the  Spaniards  more  completely 
than  any  other  European  people,  but  which  has 
wrought  mischief  enough  in  other  countries  than 
Spain.  To  insure  absolute  "  religious  unity," 
to  insure  that  from  the  Pyrenees  to  Gibraltar  all 
people  should  think  exactly  alike  about  ques- 
tions which  are  confessedly  unfathomable  by 
the  human  mind,  —  this  seemed  to  the  Spaniard 
an  end  of  such  supreme  importance  as  to  justify 
the  destruction  of  two  hundred  thousand  lives, 
and  the  overthrow  of  some  of  the  chief  indus- 
tries of  the  kingdom.  The  annals  of  persecu- 
tion in  other  countries  serve  but  to  point  the 
same  moral.  Measured  by  the  quantity  of  suf- 
fering it  has  entailed,  as  well  as  by  the  whole- 
sale disregard  of  moral  rectitude  it  has  involved, 
the  history  of  the  attempt  to  enforce  "  religious 
unity  "  is,  no  doubt,  the  blackest  of  all  the 
black  chapters  in  the  awful  career  of  mankind 
upon  the  earth. 

Yet,  no  doubt,  the  object  for  which  all  this 
agony  has  been  inflicted,  and  all  this  villainy 
perpetrated,  is  an  utterly  worthless  object,  when 
considered  with  reference  to  the  conditions  of 
life  in  a  civilized  society.  Not  only  is  it  not  de- 
sirable that  all  the  members  of  the  community 
should  hold  the  same  opinions  about  religious 
matters,  but  it  is  far  better  that  they  should  not 
all  hold  the  same  opinions.  To  the  French- 
man's sneer  about  the  English,  who  have  twenty 
224 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

religions  and  only  one  sauce,  I  should  answer : 
By  all  means  let  us  have  twenty  religions,  even 
if  we  can  have  but  one  sauce.  In  comparison 
with  the  inscrutable  realities  which  religion  pos- 
tulates, our  most  elaborate  attempts  at  theology 
are  so  feeble  that  it  is  not  likely  that  any  given 
set  of  opinions  can  represent  more  than  the 
tiniest  segment  of  the  truth  : 

"  Our  little  systems  have  their  day  ; 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be  ; 

They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 

And  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they." 

In  view  of  this  weakness  of  reason,  when  con- 
fronted with  the  mighty  problems  of  religion,  it 
behooves  each  one  of  us  to  greet  his  neighbour's 
opinions  as,  perhaps,  containing  a  glimpse  of 
truth  which  his  own  have  lacked ;  not  to  scoff 
or  frown  at  them  as  "  different "  from  his  own. 
If  "religious  unity"  is  ever  to  have  any  value, 
it  can  only  be  when  it  is  reached  as  the  outcome 
of  the  free  untrammelled  working  of  countless 
individual  minds.  Until  it  is  reached  in  this 
way,  "  religious  unity  "  can  mean  nothing  but 
"  intellectual  torpidity  where  religious  questions 
are  concerned  ; "  and,  meanwhile,  diversity  of 
opinion  is  the  best  guarantee  we  can  have  that 
a  healthy  intellectual  activity  is  going  on. 

In  the  present  paper,  however,  I  propose  to 
examine  the  desire  to  enforce  "  religious  unity  " 
by  the  light  of  the  comparative  method  ;  let  us 
225 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

see  if  there  has  not  existed  a  state  of  society  in 
which  it  may  have  been  desirable  that  all  the 
members  of  the  community  should  think  alike, 
on  religious  as  well  as  on  other  subjects. 

Toward  the  close  of  my  paper  on  uThe 
Causes  of  Persecution,"  I  called  attention  to 
the  intense  feeling  of  corporate  responsibility 
which  pervaded  all  the  life  of  ancient  society, 
and  which,  no  doubt,  goes  farther  than  any- 
thing else  toward  explaining  the  genesis  of  per- 
secution. To  understand  the  origin  and  meaning 
of  this  notion  of  corporate  responsibility,  we 
must  carry  our  thoughts  back  to  that  primitive 
state  of  society  when  there  are  no  political  ag- 
gregates more  extensive  than  the  clan^  or,  at 
any  rate,  than  the  tribe>  formed  by  the  coales- 
cence of  kindred  clans.  In  this  lowest  stage  of 
human  progress,  blood-relationship  furnishes 
the  only  possible  bond  by  which  any  concert  of 
action  among  men  can  be  secured.  The  ideas 
of  right  and  duty,  in  so  far  as  recognized  at  all 
by  the  dim  intelligence  of  nascent  humanity,  are 
recognized  only  within  the  limits  of  ascertaina- 
ble  blood-relationship.  The  comparative  study 
of  institutions,  among  civilized  people  and 
among  savages,  has  established  beyond  doubt 
that  this  was  the  social  condition  of  mankind  at 
the  beginning  of  its  distinctively  human  career. 
I  have  myself  shown  that  the  very  same  coop- 
crating  processes  which  originated  the  family, 
226 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

originated,  also,  those  intellectual  and  moral  dif- 
ferences by  which  humanity  was  first  raised 
above  the  common  level  of  apehood.1  Had  the 
infancy  of  man  been  completed  within  a  period 
of  three  or  four  months,  as  is  the  case  with 
other  mammals,  man  would  never  have  become 
human  :  there  would  have  been  no  social  aggre- 
gation, and  there  could  not  have  been  originated 
that  long-enduring  process  of  intellectual  and 
moral  development  which  was  rendered  possible 
only  through  social  aggregation,  and  which 
went  on  so  far  during  prehistoric  times  as  to 
raise  the  human  brain  to  nearly  twice  the  di- 
mensions of  the  brain  of  the  highest  ape.  But 
the  prolonging  of  the  period  of  helpless  infancy 
brought  with  it  the  genesis  of  the  family,  and 
thus  inaugurated  the  first  enduring  principle  of 
concerted  action  among  human  beings. 

By  simple  expansion,  the  family  grew  into 
the  clan,  and  by  expansion  and  coalescence  small 
groups  of  clans  grew  into  the  tribe;  and  through- 
out these  earliest  stages  of  social  organization 
the  principle  of  concerted  action  remains  the 
same  that  was  first  inaugurated  by  the  genesis 
of  the  family.  In  the  tribal  stage  the  ideas  of 
right  and  wrong  are  recognized,  but  their  appli- 
cation is  strictly  determined  by  the  necessities 
of  the  tribe.  Right  actions  are  those  which  help, 

1  See  below,  the  paper  on  the  "  Meaning  of  Infancy." 
See  also  Darwinism  and  other  Essays,  iii. 
227 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

or  are  supposed  to  help,  the  tribe  in  its  per- 
petual struggle  for  existence  with  surrounding 
tribes;  wrong  actions  are  those  which  hurt,  or 
are  supposed  to  hurt,  the  tribe's  chances  of 
success.  It  is  wrong  to  murder  a  fellow-tribes- 
man, though  human  sacrifices  or  female  infanti- 
cide may  be  sanctioned  from  motives  of  general 
policy  ;  it  is  praiseworthy  to  murder  a  stranger, 
unless  perhaps  when  he  belongs  to  some  power- 
ful tribe  which  it  is  imprudent  to  offend.  Above 
all  things,  the  prime  social  and  political  neces- 
sity is  social  cohesion  within  the  tribal  limits, 
for  unless  such  social  cohesion  be  maintained, 
the  very  existence  of  the  tribe  is  likely  to  be 
extinguished  in  bloodshed.  Such  was  doubtless 
in  general  the  state  of  things  which  lasted  for 
more  than  four  thousand  centuries,  during  which 
men  lived  and  died  upon  the  earth  before  they 
had  acquired  enough  intelligence  or  enough 
political  stability  to  leave  anywhere  a  written 
record  of  their  thoughts  and  deeds.  Ten  or 
twelve  thousand  generations  of  ruthless  military 
discipline !  ten  or  twelve  thousand  generations 
of  rigorous  conformity  to  tribal  requirements, 
enforced  under  the  perpetual  threat  of  tribal 
extinction  !  Such  was  the  terrible  schooling,  that 
was  needed  to  fit  men  for  aggregation  into  great 
and  complex  societies.  Included  in  this  military 
discipline,  as  part  and  parcel  of  it,  was  an  incip- 
ient ecclesiastical  discipline.  Long  before  the 
228 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

dawn  of  history,  ancestor- worship  had  begun. 
The  ghosts  of  dead  chieftains,  in  this  primitive 
philosophy,  survived  as  the  tutelar  deities  of  the 
tribe,  ready  now,  as  of  old  in  their  life-time,  to 
punish  misdemeanours,  but  clothed  with  a  power 
all  the  more  vast  and  awful,  as  its  nature  and 
limits  were  but  vaguely  and  incoherently  im- 
agined. To  offend  in  any  particular  against  the 
ethical  and  ceremonial  code  established  from 
time  immemorial  under  the  pressure  of  tribal 
necessities  would  be  to  invite  the  vengeance  of 
the  tutelar  deities.  The  offender  must  be  cur- 
tailed of  his  liberty,  or  maimed,  or  killed,  or 
else  by  an  easy  inference  the  fellow-tribesmen 
would  be  liable  to  be  held  as  participators  in 
the  offence,  and  dire  calamity  might  thus  befall 
the  whole  tribe.  Tempest  or  famine  or  pesti- 
lence or  defeat  in  battle  might  be  expected  by 
the  tribe  which  should  fail  to  punish  an  offence 
on  the  part  of  one  of  its  members  against  the 
tutelar  deities.  This  feeling  of  corporate  respon- 
sibility is  always  to  be  found  among  tribally 
organized  barbarians ;  it  existed  among  our  own 
barbaric  ancestors  ;  examples  of  it  are  numerous 
in  Graeco-Roman  antiquity ;  and  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  in  primitive  society  the  feeling 
was  universally  prevalent  and  ferociously  intense 
withal,  since  no  other  human  passion  is  so  cruel 
as  fear,  and  no  other  kind  of  fear  is  so  cruel  as 
the  vague  dread  of  the  supernatural.  And  obvi- 
229 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ously  there  is  no  kind  of  conduct  which  would 
so  surely  awaken  the  dread  of  supernatural 
vengeance  as  any  neglect  of  the  time-honoured 
rites  due  to  the  tutelar  deities,  or  any  expression 
of  opinion,  whether  serious  or  flippant,  which 
might  be  interpreted  as  derogatory  to  their  awful 
dignity. 

The  feeling  of  corporate  responsibility,  there- 
fore, grew  out  of  the  necessities  of  that  primeval 
society  in  which  the  highest  known  order  of 
political  organization  was  the  tribe,  and  in  which 
neighbouring  tribes  were  perpetually  at  war  with 
each  other.  Under  such  circumstances,  those 
tribes  in  which  the  feeling  of  corporate  respon- 
sibility was  most  intense  must  in  general  have 
shown  the  highest  capacity  for  coherent  organ- 
ization, and  must  have  subjugated  or  extin- 
guished those  tribes  in  which  the  feeling  was 
more  feebly  developed.  The  feeling  must  have 
grown  by  natural  selection  until  it  became,  as  it 
were,  part  and  parcel  of  the  mental  constitution 
of  mankind.  No  wonder  that  we  find  the  feel- 
ing so  strongly  developed  among  the  highly  cul- 
tured Greeks  and  Romans  and  Jews.  A  feeling 
so  deeply  rooted  in  men's  ancestral  experiences 
must  needs  survive  long  after  the  establishment 
of  social  conditions  totally  different  from  the 
conditions  which  implanted  it.  If  we  wish  for 
evidence  that  this  sense  of  corporate  responsi- 
bility has  lain  at  the  bottom  of  a  great  part  of 
230 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

the  persecution  which  has  made  ecclesiastical 
history  so  abominable,  we  may  find  it,  ready  to 
hand,  in  the  tale  of  wickedness  with  which  I 
began  the  present  discussion.  One  of  the  argu- 
ments for  the  banishment  of  the  Moriscoes,upon 
which  the  Archbishop  of  Valencia  mainly  relied, 
was  the  argument  that  the  whole  Spanish  people 
were  in  the  sight  of  Heaven  responsible  for  the 
doubtful  orthodoxy  of  these  converts  from  Is- 
lam. "He  declared  that  the  Armada,  which 
Philip  II.  sent  against  England  in  1588,  had 
been  destroyed  because  God  would  not  allow 
even  that  pious  enterprise  to  succeed  while  those 
who  undertook  it  left  heretics  undisturbed  at 
home.  For  the  same  reason,  the  late  expedition 
to  Algiers  had  failed  ;  it  being  evidently  the 
will  of  Heaven  that  nothing  should  prosper 
while  Spain  was  inhabited  by  apostates."  ]  This 
argument,  which  produced  a  powerful  effect 
upon  both  king  and  people,  was  conceived  pre- 
cisely in  the  spirit  of  the  primeval  savage.  And 
so  when  Mary  Tudor,  being  afflicted  with 
dropsy,  supposed  that  she  was  about  to  give 
birth  to  a  prince  who  should  exclude  from  the 
succession  the  heretical  Elizabeth,  when  the  Te 
Deum  was  sung  in  St.  Paul's,  and  vessels  on  the 
Thames  fired  salutes,  and  merry  bells  were  set 
ringing  in  all  the  churches,  and  still  the  expected 
prince  did  not  make  his  appearance  ;  when,  after 
1  Buckle,  vol.  ii.  p.  47. 
231 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  keen  disappointment,  the  queen  began  to 
reason  with  herself,  "  she  could  not  doubt  that 
her  hopes  had  been  at  one  time  well  founded ; 
but  for  some  fault,  some  error  in  herself,  God 
had  delayed  the  fulfilment  of  His  promise. 
And  what  could  that  crime  be  ?  The  accursed 
thing  was  still  in  the  realm.  She  had  been  raised 
up,  like  the  judges  in  Israel,  for  the  extermina- 
tion of  God's  enemies  ;  and  she  had  smitten 
but  a  few  here  and  there,  when,  like  the  evil 
spirits,  their  name  was  legion."  *  As  the  prac- 
tical result  of  these  pious  meditations,  some 
fifty  Protestants  —  one  of  my  own  ancestors 
among  them  —  were  forthwith  burned  at  the 
stake.  Obviously,  Mary's  reasoning,  like  that 
of  the  Spanish  Archbishop,  had  no  validity  or 
significance  whatever,  except  as  it  appealed  to 
that  terrible  sense  of  corporate  responsibility 
which  they  had  inherited  as  a  tradition  from  pre- 
historic times. 

Now,  although  the  feeling  of  corporate  re- 
sponsibility for  opinions  was  still  so  powerful  as 
recently  as  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies, although  plentiful  traces  of  it  may  still  be 
found  at  the  present  day,  nevertheless  the  state 
of  things  by  which  the  feeling  was  logically  jus- 
tified has  long  since  passed  away.  And  it  has 
passed  away,  no  doubt,  never  to  return.  It  be- 
gan to  pass  away  so  soon  as  men  began  to  become 
1  Froude,  History  of  England,  vi.  330. 
232 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

organized  into  great  nations,  covering  a  vast  ex- 
tent of  territory,  and  secured  by  their  concen- 
trated military  strength  against  the  gravest  dan- 
gers of  barbaric  attack.  In  European  history, 
the  first  conspicuous  approach  to  this  new  state 
of  things  was  made  by  the  tremendous  conquests 
of  Rome.  For  a  period  of  five  centuries  after 
the  overthrow  of  Carthage  and  Macedonia,  the 
Roman  government  held  together  a  greater 
number  of  men  of  different  races,  tongues,  and 
faiths  than  had  ever  before  been  so  long  held 
together  since  the  world  began  ;  and,  through- 
out the  vast  territory  over  which  it  held  sway, 
it  succeeded  in  maintaining  a  state  of  peace  which, 
imperfect  and  fitful  as  it  seems  from  the  point 
of  view  which  we  moderns  have  reached,  still 
presented  a  striking  contrast  to  the  perpetual 
and  universal  warfare  of  primitive  peoples.  Un- 
der this  condition  of  things,  the  old  ideas  and 
feelings  began  to  be  modified  in  many  ways. 
The  passage  from  ancient  to  modern  ideas  of 
social  obligation  can  be  largely  traced  in  the 
wonderfully  suggestive  history  of  the  Roman 
jurisprudence.  In  the  early  ages  of  the  Repub- 
lic we  find  the  legal  existence  of  the  individual 
well-nigh  merged  in  that  of  his  family,  and  we 
find  his  duties  and  obligations  defined  entirely 
by  the  status  in  which  he  is  born.  But,  by  the 
time  of  the  great  codification  which  went  on 
under  the  Empire  we  find  the  legal  existence 
233 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  the  individual  distinctly  acknowledged,  and 
his  duties  and  obligations  largely  determined 
by  contract,  as  is  the  case  in  modern  society. 
Manifestly,  the  relations  sustained  by  the  indi- 
vidual toward  so  great  a  whole  as  the  Empire 
could  not  be  like  the  relations  sustained  by  the 
individual  toward  so  small  a  whole  as  the  tribe. 
Through  the  sheer  breaking  up  of  tribal  ideas 
of  obligation  which  the  Empire  everywhere 
effected,  the  ideas  of  individual  obligation  char- 
acteristic of  modern  society  began  to  emerge 
into  the  foreground.  The  most  fundamental 
and  far-reaching  effect  of  Roman  conquest  was 
the  decomposition  of  primitive  ideas,  political 
and  social,  legal  and  religious.  The  world  of 
separate  tribes  and  separate  cities,  each  with  its 
peculiar  laws,  and  each  with  its  local  deities  and 
rites,  came  to  an  end,  and  was  replaced  by  an 
organized  European  world,  with  its  Roman  law, 
based  on  ethical  principles  acknowledged  by  vast 
masses  of  men,  and  with  its  Christian  religion, 
based  on  the  assertion  of  the  universal  brother- 
hood of  men  and  the  universal  fatherhood  of 
God. 

As  in  the  Roman  law,  so  also  in  Christianity, 
the  innumerable  new  relations  into  which  men 
were  thrown  resulted  in  a  great  deal  of  abstrac- 
tion and  generalization  concerning  the  scope  of 
men's  rights  and  duties.  In  the  one  case  as  in 
the  other,  the  liberation  of  the  individual  from 
234 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

the  old  tribal  bonds  was  effected  by  the  process 
which  brought  him  into  immediate  relations  with 
a  state  possessing  a  dominion  that  was  practically 
universal,  and  with  Deity  regarded  as  eternally 
ruling  the  whole  created  world.  The  individual 
salvation  of  each  human  being,  as  dependent 
upon  his  spiritual  attitude  toward  his  heavenly 
Father,  is  an  idea  distinctly  present  in  Christian- 
ity as  first  enunciated,  and  in  the  prominence 
assumed  by  this  grand  idea  the  old  notion  of 
tribal  allegiance  to  a  tutelar  deity  fades  entirely 
out  of  sight.  The  idea  that  salvation  is  to  be 
attained  through  conformity  to  a  certain  pre- 
scribed set  of  opinions  or  of  ritual  observances, 
or  through  obedience  to  a  certain  ordained  priest- 
hood, finds  no  support  whatever  in  the  teachings 
of  Jesus  as  reported  in  the  Gospels.  So  far  from 
lending  support  to  this  primitive  idea  of  religious 
obligation,  Gospel  Christianity  is  in  itself  a  most 
emphatic  protest  against  it ;  and  it  was  through 
this  wholesale  discarding  of  primitive  ideas  that 
Christianity  secured  from  the  outset  an  element 
of  permanence  such  as  no  other  scheme  of  re- 
ligion has  ever  possessed.  Miraculous  legend, 
impressive  ceremonial,  priestly  devotion,  doc- 
trines awful  or  consoling,  —  these  things  have  at 
times  been  potent  influences  in  maintaining  the 
sway  of  Christianity  over  the  human  mind  ;  but 
the  potency  of  such  influences  as  these  is  limited 
in  extent  and  in  duration,  —  it  is  dependent 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

upon  transient  states  of  society  and  transient 
phases  of  opinion.  The  permanent  element  in 
Christianity  —  the  feature  whereby  it  may  still 
claim  the  allegiance  of  modern  thinkers  who  re- 
ject the  supernatural  theology  and  the  symbolic 
ritual  —  is  the  fact  of  its  placing  the  conditions 
of  salvation,  not  in  doctrine  or  in  ceremonial, 
but  in  right  conduct  as  flowing  from  the  impulse 
toward  a  higher  life  in  which  religion  most  es- 
sentially consists.  Not  they  that  say  unto  me, 
"  Lord,  Lord,"  but  they  that  do  the  will  of  our 
Father  in  heaven,  —  such  was  the  first  authorita- 
tive definition  of  the  aspect  of  human  life  with 
which  Christianity  primarily  concerns  itself. 

Thus,  Christianity  in  its  earliest  form  may  be 
regarded  as  a  kind  of  Protestantism,  in  which  old 
heathen  ideas  of  conformity  to  tribal  require- 
ments as  to  doctrine  and  ritual  were  utterly  dis- 
carded, and  in  which  religion  was  presented  as 
something  which  concerns  the  individual  alone  in 
the  presence  of  the  infinite  God.  But  so  lofty  a 
conception  as  this  could  not  be  realized  so  long  as 
Christianity  had  to  make  its  way  as  a  militant 
force  among  peoples  who  were  still  largely  un- 
der the  influence  of  primeval  ideas  of  corporate 
responsibility  for  opinion.  Already,  in  their 
struggle  with  the  pagan  society  of  the  Empire, 
the  preachers  of  the  new  ideas  found  it  necessary 
to  become  organized  as  a  "  church  militant,"  and 
to  have  certain  recognized  dogmas,  or  —  to  use 
236 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

the  old  and  expressive  term — symbols,  as  a  sort 
of  banner  around  which  to  rally  their  adherents. 
This  militant  character  of  the  early  church  ex- 
plains the  persistency  with  which  all  gnostic  or 
rationalizing  interpretations  of  sacred  mysteries 
were  condemned  and  set  aside  ;  they  were  liable 
to  the  charge  of  offering  some  possible  ground 
of  compromise  with  pagan  philosophic  ideas. 
The  most  rigid  and  uncompromising  symbol  — 
the  one  which  involved  the  most  complete  self- 
surrender  to  the  interests  of  the  common  strug- 
gle—  was  the  one  which  worked  the  best;  and 
hence  there  lay  a  certain  sort  of  rude  practical 
logic  beneath  the  much-derided  and  often  mis- 
quoted phrase  of  Tertullian,  Credo  quia  impos- 
sibile^  To  rationalize  the  new  dogma  of  the 
Trinity  was  in  itself  to  make  a  quasi-concession 
to  the  Neo-Platonists  ;  and  herein  was  reason 
enough  why  the  Athanasian  interpretation 
should  supplant  the  Arian.  An  organized  priest- 
hood was  necessary,  too,  in  order  to  preserve 
the  liberty  of  the  Church  at  a  time  when  the  po- 
litical structure  of  society  was  such  that  there 
was  no  other  available  check  upon  the  auto- 
cratic power  of  the  emperors.  In  its  attitude  as 
a  "church  militant,"  therefore,  Christianity  was 
compelled  to  enforce  conformity  to  dogma,  and 

1  This  point  is  well  brought  out  in  the  Rev.  J.  H.  Allen's 
excellent  little  book,  Christian  History  in  its  Three  Great 
Periods. 

237 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

obedience  to  priestly  authority ;  and  in  doing 
these  things,  the  feeling,  still  rife  among  men, 
to  which  it  appealed,  was  the  old  feeling  of  cor- 
porate responsibility  for  opinion. 

The  old  feeling,  thus  strongly  appealed  to  at 
a  time  when  its  basis  in  the  conditions  of  prime- 
val society  had  been  destroyed,  received  still 
stronger  reinforcement  when  the  Church  took 
upon  itself  the  tremendous  task — to  which  the 
political  forces  of  the  Empire  were  no  longer 
competent  —  of  civilizing  the  barbaric  world. 
From  the  time  of  Ulfilas  to  the  time  of  Anschar 
there  were  five  centuries  of  militancy,  during 
which  all  the  power  of  the  spiritual  as  well  as  of 
the  secular  arm  was  taxed  to  the  utmost  in  the 
work  of  making  the  Teutonic  barbarians  adopt 
the  results  of  Graeco-Roman  civilization.  In 
warfare  of  this  sort,  the  Church  could  do  no- 
thing less  than  appeal  to  the  only  available  reli- 
gious conceptions  with  which  the  past  experience 
of  its  converts  had  made  them  familiar.  As  in 
the  political  system  of  these  ages  of  transition 
between  ancient  and  modern  civilization  we  ob- 
serve a  partial  and  temporary  retrogression  to- 
ward a  pre-Roman  tribal  and  local  polity,  —  as 
exemplified  in  some  of  the  aspects  of  feudalism, 
—  so  too  in  religious  conceptions  we  may  ob- 
serve a  partial  and  temporary  renascence  of 
primitive  pagan  ideas.  To  say  that  the  Church 
adopted  many  pagan  symbols  is  only  to  say  that 
238 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

the  great  men  who  shaped  its  missionary  policy 
talked  to  their  pagan  converts  in  the  language 
which  they  were  best  capable  of  understanding. 
The  Church  thus  adopted  the  doctrine  of  cor- 
porate responsibility  for  opinion,  very  much  as 
it  adopted  Yule-tide  and  Easter  feasts,  and  the 
worship,  under  a  scriptural  name,  of  the  Bere- 
cynthian  Mother.  The  outcome  of  all  this  was 
that  in  the  process  of  Christianizing  the  pagan 
world  Christianity  itself  became  more  or  less 
deeply  paganized.  Hence  those  terrible  perse- 
cutions, of  Albigensian  and  other  heretics,  which 
marked  the  epoch  of  the  Church's  greatesj  su- 
premacy, and  which  no  one  thought  of  justifying 
from  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  but  only  from  Old 
Testament  texts  expressing  the  crude  primitive 
notions  of  the  Jews  in  their  semi-barbarous  pe- 
riod. 

But  now,  after  the  Teutonic  and  Slavic  bar- 
barians had  become  pretty  nearly  all  converted ; 
after  Europe  had  come  to  feel  itself  reasonably 
secure  against  being  overrun  by  Saracens  or 
Mongols  ;  after  the  principal  European  king- 
doms had  arrived  at  something  like  political 
stability ;  after  the  Crusades  had  shaken  up 
men's  ideas  by  bringing  the  civilizations  of  the 
East  and  West  in  contact  with  each  other  ;  and 
after  the  partly  paganized  Church  had  begun  to 
put  forth  such  pretensions  as,  if  successful,  would 
have  converted  Europe  into  a  caliphate,  an* 
239 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

would  thus  have  inflicted  upon  it  the  doom  of 
stagnation  like  that  which  has  overtaken  the 
Mohammedan  world ;  after  this  state  of  things 
had  been  reached,  in  the  course  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  then  symptoms  of  dissent  began  to 
manifest  themselves,  —  vague  murmurs,  which 
heralded  the  great  Protestant  storm  that  was 
gathering.  It  was  in  the  thirteenth  century  that 
the  Church  thought  it  necessary  to  desecrate  the 
noble  enthusiasm  which  had  inspired  the  Cru- 
sades, by  employing  it  to  crush  out  heresy  with 
fire  and  sword  in  the  southern  parts  of  France, 
—  thus  beginning  that  detestable  scheme  of  rob- 
bing the  French  nation  of  its  nimblest  minds 
and  strongest  characters,  which  was  continued 
in  scenes  like  the  St.  Bartholomew,  and  was 
consummated  in  the  infamous  dragonnades  of 
1685.  It  was  in  the  thirteenth  century,  too,  that 
the  Spanish  mind  hit  upon  that  ingenious  device 
of  the  Inquisition,  whereby  all  speculative 
originality  was  to  be  effectually  extinguished  in 
so-called  "  acts-of-faith,"  to  the  proper  perform- 
ance of  which  an  abundant  supply  of  fire-wood 
was  the  principal  requisite.  These  new  develop- 
ments of  the  persecuting  spirit  show  how  for- 
midable the  spirit  of  dissent  was  then  becoming. 
This  spirit  of  dissent,  both  at  that  time  and  in 
later  days,  was  fond  of  assuming  the  form  of  a 
protest  against  the  pagan  corruptions  of  the 
Church,  and  in  behalf  of  a  return  to  the  sim- 
240 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

plicity  of  organization,  of  doctrine,  and  of  ritual, 
and  to  the  purity  of  life,  which  characterized  the 
Christianity  of  the  apostolic  age.  This  common 
element  is  discernible  alike  in  the  Bogomilians 
of  the  East,  and  in  the  Albigensians,  Hussites, 
and  Lollards  of  the  West ;  and  in  the  Puritan- 
ism of  later  times  it  is  conspicuous.  The  ma- 
jestic revolt  of  Luther  —  an  event  which  did 
more  for  true  religion  than  anything  which  had 
happened  in  the  world  since  the  days  of  Jesus 
and  Paul  —  can  in  nowise  be  likened  to  the 
innumerable  schisms  which  have  divided  the 
Church  on  special  points  of  doctrine,  organiza- 
tion, and  ritual.  Its  scope  and  importance  were 
far  greater  than  any  of  these,  important  as  many 
of  these  have  been.  It  took  issue  with  the  fun- 
damental assumption  upon  which  the  Church 
had  come,  by  slow  degrees,  to  take  its  stand  — 
the  assumption  of  corporate  responsibility  for 
opinion  and  ceremonial.  Its  denial,  though 
not  explicit  in  every  instance,  was  nevertheless 
couched  in  such  wise  as  to  cover  implicitly  the 
whole  ground  upon  which  the  Church  assumed 
the  right  to  interfere  with  individual  freedom. 
The  protest  of  Luther,  when  its  logical  impli- 
cations are  unfolded,  involves  the  assertion  of 
the  right  of  each  individual  to  decide  for  him- 
self what  theological  doctrines  he  can  or  cannot 
accept,  what  ecclesiastical  observances  he  shall 
or  shall  not  adopt,  and  generally  in  what  way 
241 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

he  is  to  worship  God.  It  has,  indeed,  required 
three  centuries  of  discussion,  since  Luther's  time, 
to  unfold  all  the  logical  implications  of  Protest- 
antism. The  theory  of  life  which  it  contained 
was  too  lofty  to  be  thoroughly  and  consistently 
understood,  even  by  those  who  first  conceived 
it  distinctly  enough  to  be  willing  to  fight  for  it ; 
and  most  Protestant  churches  have  practically 
retained  fragments  here  and  there  of  the  old 
Romanist  and  quasi-pagan  assumption  of  cor- 
porate responsibility.  The  struggle  of  the  Pro- 
testant world,  however,  has,  in  the  main,  been 
a  struggle  in  behalf  of  the  principle  of  individ- 
ual responsibility,  and  in  general  the  most  en- 
ergetic Protestants  have  been  found  on  the  side 
of  absolute  freedom  in  politics,  which  always 
means  absolute  freedom  in  religion  sooner  or 
later.  It  was  the  intensely  Protestant  Puritans 
who  overthrew  the  last  attempts  at  tyranny  on 
the  part  of  English  kings,  both  in  England  and 
in  America. 

It  would  not  be  correct,  therefore,  to  describe 
Protestantism  —  any  more  than  it  would  be 
correct  to  describe  Christianity  —  as  a  system 
of  doctrines.  To  point  to  any  particular  doc- 
trines held  in  common  by  all  Protestants  would 
be  as  difficult  as  to  point  to  any  particular  doc- 
trines held  in  common  by  all  Christians.  Viewed 
in  the  light  of  its  own  historic  genesis,  Protest- 
antism may  be  described  as  that  kind  of  reli- 
242 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

gious  polity  which  is  based  upon  the  conception 
of  individual  responsibility  for  opinion.  The 
antagonist  conception  —  of  corporate  responsi- 
bility for  opinion —  had  its  origin  and  justifica- 
tion in  the  military  necessities  of  primeval 
society,  when  there  were  no  political  aggregates 
larger  than  the  tribe.  With  the  aggregation  of 
men  into  great,  complex,  and  stable  political 
aggregates,  —  in  other  words,  with  the  passing 
away  of  the  circumstances  by  which  the  notion 
of  corporate  responsibility  was  historically  jus- 
tified, —  the  notion  began  to  lose  its  hold  upon 
men's  minds.  As  men  in  the  ordinary  affairs 
of  life  began  to  proceed  upon  the  notion  of  in- 
dividual responsibility,  they  began  to  apply  the 
same  principle  to  religious  matters ;  and  great 
religious  teachers  began  to  protest  against  the 
various  implications  of  the  primeval  notion. 
Such  a  protest  was  implicitly  made  by  the 
Founder  of  Christianity,  who  insisted  upon  the 
importance  of  conduct  and  the  worthlessness 
of  ceremonial  and  formula  ;  and  fifteen  centu- 
ries later,  after  Europe  had  emerged  from  a 
life  and  death  struggle  with  barbarism,  in  which 
primitive  notions  had  been  partially  revived  and 
the  Church  had  become  partially  paganized,  a 
similar  protest,  in  the  name  of  Christ,  was  ex- 
plicitly made  by  Martin  Luther. 

January,  1881. 


243 


THE  TRUE   LESSON  OF  PROTEST- 
ANTISM l 

SINCE  the  day  when  Martin  Luther 
posted  his  audacious  heresies  on  the 
church  door  at  Wittenberg,  a  great  change 
has  come  over  men's  minds,  the  full  significance 
of  which  is  even  yet  but  rarely  comprehended. 
To  inquire  into  the  nature  of  this  change,  and 
into  what  we  may  perhaps  call  its  ultimate  tend- 
ency, is  well  worth  our  while,  whether  as  stu- 
dents of  history  or  as  students  of  philosophy. 
In  outward  aspect,  the  results  of  Protestantism 
have  come  to  be  very  different  to-day  from 
what  they  were  at  first.  The  immediate  conse- 
quence of  Luther's  successful  revolt  was  the 
formation  of  a  great  number  of  little  churches, 
each  with  its  creed  as  clean-cut  and  as  thoroughly 
dried  as  the  creed  of  the  great  church  from 
which  they  had  separated,  each  making  prac- 
tically the  same  assumption  of  absolute  infalli- 
bility, each  laying  down  an  intellectual  assent 
to  sundry  transcendental  dogmas  as  an  exclusive 

1  An  address  delivered  before  a  Convention  of  Unitarian 
clergymen  at  Princeton,  Mass.,  October  4,  1881. 
244 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

condition  of  salvation.  This  formation  of  new 
sects  has  gone  on  down  to  the  present  time, 
and  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  con- 
tinue in  future  ;  but  the  period  when  educated 
men,  of  great  and  original  powers,  could  take 
part  in  work  of  this  sort  has  gone  by  forever. 
The  foremost  men  are  no  longer  heresiarchs  ; 
they  are  free-thinkers,  each  on  his  own  account ; 
and  the  formation  of  new  sects  is  something 
which  in  the  future  is  likely  to  be  more  and 
more  confined  to  ignorant  or  half-educated 
classes  of  people.  At  the  present  day  it  is  not 
the  formation  of  new  sects,  but  the  decomposi- 
tion of  the  old  ones,  that  is  the  conspicuous 
phenomenon  inviting  our  attention.  The  latter 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century  will  be  known  to 
the  future  historian  as  especially  the  era  of  the 
decomposition  of  orthodoxies.  People,  as  a  rule, 
do  not  now  pass  over  from  one  church  into 
another,  but  they  remain  in  their  own  churches 
while  modifying  their  theological  opinions,  and 
in  this  way  the  orthodoxy  of  every  church  is 
gradually  but  surely  losing  its  consistency.  Nor 
is  it  only  the  laymen  of  whom  this  can  be  said ; 
for  the  clergy  every  now  and  then  set  the  ex- 
ample. An  eminent  Congregationalist  minister 
in  Connecticut,  some  few  years  since,  was  asked 
why  he  did  not  go  over  to  the  Unitarians,  in- 
asmuch as  he  not  only  kept  Strauss  and  Renan 
in  his  library,  but  even  loaned  them  to  young 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

men,  and  publicly  eulogized  Herbert  Spencer, 
and  went  so  far  one  day  as  to  take  part  in  the 
dedication  of  a  Jewish  synagogue.  The  quaint 
and  shrewd  reply  was :  "  I  don't  see  why  the 
Unitarians  should  monopolize  all  the  free-think- 
ing; I  prefer  to  carry  my  candle  where  it  is 
darkest !  "  It  is  only  four  or  five  years  since  a 
learned  English  bishop  completed  his  volumi- 
nous commentary  on  the  Pentateuch,  in  which 
the  sacred  text  is  handled  with  as  much  freedom 
as  Mr.  Paley  shows  in  dealing  with  the  Homeric 
poems,  or  Mr.  Grote  in  expounding  the  dia- 
logues of  Plato.  And  the  history  of  this,  as  of 
other  less  conspicuous  acts  of  heresy,  has  been 
held  to  show  that  practically  an  Anglican  divine 
may  preach  whatever  doctrine  he  likes  —  pro- 
vided, doubtless,  that  he  avoid  certain  obnox- 
ious catch-words.  Among  Unitarians  this  doc- 
trinal latitude  is  too  well  known  to  require  any 
illustration.  Yet  it  is  well  not  to  forget  that, 
forty  years  ago,  Theodore  Parker  was  virtually 
driven  out  of  the  Unitarian  Church  for  saying 
the  same  sort  of  things  which  may  be  heard 
to-day  from  half  the  Unitarian  pulpits  in  New 
England. 

In  view  of  all  this,  it  is  not  strange  if  we  are 
sometimes  led  to  ask,  What  is  to  be  the  final 
outcome  of  this  decomposition  of  orthodoxies  ? 
The  total  destruction  of  religious  creeds  was 
long  ago  predicted  by  Catholic  controversialists 
246 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

as  an  inevitable  result  of  the  exercise  of  that 
right  of  private  judgment  which  is  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  Protestantism ;  and  now  it 
begins  to  look  as  if  the  Catholic  prediction 
were  likely  to  be  fulfilled,  although  Protestant 
churches  have  warmly  resented  the  imputation, 
and  have  too  often  taken  pains  to  show  that  in 
strait  and  uncompromising  bigotry  they  could 
vie  with  their  great  antagonist.  While  Catholics, 
on  the  one  hand,  have  foretold  this  result  by 
way  of  warning  and  opprobrium,  on  the  other 
hand  it  has  been  no  less  confidently  predicted 
by  atheists,  materialists,  and  positivists  by  way 
of  encouragement  and  approval.  To  Comte  the 
chaos  of  opinion  which  prevails  in  modern  soci- 
ety afforded  proof  that  the  time  was  ripe  for 
discarding  theology  and  metaphysics  altogether, 
and  for  confining  the  operations  of  the  human 
mind  hereafter  to  the  simple  content  of  observed 
facts.  To  Dr.  Biichner  and  his  friends  it  pre- 
sages the  speedy  advent  of  that  glorious  mil- 
lennium when  all  men  shall  felicitate  themselves 
upon  the  prospect  of  dying  like  the  beasts  of 
the  field.  On  the  one  side  and  on  the  other  we 
hear  it  maintained,  with  equal  emphasis,  that  any 
system  of  Protestantism  —  any  system  which 
seeks  to  combine  absolute  freedom  of  specu- 
lation with  an  essentially  religious  attitude  of 
mind — is  logically  absurd,  and  is  destined  to 
be  superseded.  The  only  question  is  as  to 
247 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

what  alternative  is  to  survive  the  inevitable 
fate  of  all  such  misguided  attempts  ;  and  here 
Dr.  Biichner  and  the  Pope  will  be  found  to 
disagree.  While  on  the  one  hand  it  is  held 
that  the  course  of  modern  philosophic  thought 
is  so  distinctly  toward  materialism  that  every 
one  who  is  not  a  materialist  is  behind  the  age, 
on  the  other  hand  it  is  prophesied  that,  out  of 
sheer  weariness  of  the  scepticism  that  is  the 
perpetual  outcome  of  free  inquiry,  there  will 
eventually  be  brought  about  a  renaissance  of 
the  ages  of  faith.  I  do  not  know  that  it  can  be 
said  precisely  how  far  these  expectations  go. 
Probably  it  is  not  expected  that  crusades  or 
pilgrimages  to  Compostella  will  again  become 
fashionable  in  the  complex  industrial  society  of 
the  future ;  perhaps  it  is  not  expected  that 
leaders  of  scientific  thought  will  accept  the  mir- 
acle of  St.  Januarius,  for  the  Catholic  Church 
has  oftentimes  known  how  to  be  judiciously  lax 
about  such  matters  ;  but  there  is  no  doubt  a 
vague  expectation  that,  in  spite  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  thought  which  scientific  studies  are 
fostering,  a  line  will  somehow  be  drawn  beyond 
which  men  shall  agree  to  submit  their  judgment 
to  that  of  the  Church.  It  is  not  Catholics  only 
who  make  this  tacit  assumption  :  it  is  made,  in 
one  form  or  another,  by  every  one  who  argues 
that  his  own  particular  orthodoxy  is  destined  to 
survive  the  shocks  of  scientific  scepticism  ;  and  it 
248 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

underlies  the  remark  which  we  sometimes  hear, 
that  all  would  be  well  if  men  of  science  would 
only  keep  their  place  and  not  encroach  upon  the 
province  of  the  theologian.  The  alternative, 
then,  is,  when  stated  as  broadly  as  possible, 
Will  the  present  decomposition  of  beliefs  be 
succeeded  by  a  period  of  reconstruction  in  which 
the  teachings  of  some  church  shall  be  accepted 
as  authoritative  concerning  questions  of  a  purely 
religious  nature,  or  will  the  decomposition  go  on 
until  the  last  vestige  of  recognition  of  religious 
questions  shall  have  vanished,  and  all  educated 
men  shall  have  become  atheistic  materialists  ? 
It  is  my  object  on  the  present  occasion  to  show 
that  no  such  alternative  really  confronts  us  ;  that 
the  very  propounding  of  such  a  question  in- 
volves grave  philosophical  and  historical  errors ; 
that  neither  materialism  on  the  one  hand,  nor 
any  species  of  ecclesiastical  orthodoxy  on  the 
other  hand,  is  likely  to  become  prevalent  in  the 
future  ;  and  that  the  maintenance  of  an  essen- 
tially religious  attitude  of  mind  is  compatible 
with  absolute  freedom  of  speculation  on  all  sub- 
jects, whether  scientific  or  metaphysical. 

In  my  apprehension  it  is  a  very  serious  mis- 
take, though  a  very  common  one,  to  suppose  that 
the  tendency  of  modern  philosophic  thought  is 
toward  materialism.  On  this  subject  there  is  a 
great  confusion  of  ideas,  which  is  aggravated  by 
a  general  uncertainty  as  to  just  what  materialism 
249 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

really  is.  The  word  "materialism  "  has  been  so 
commonly  used  in  a  vituperative  rather  than  a 
descriptive  sense,  that  it  has  become  somewhat 
damaged  for  philosophical  purposes.  When- 
ever Auguste  Comte  had  to  deal  with  some 
opinion  which  he  did  not  like,  —  it  made  little 
or  no  difference  what  it  was  about,  —  he  used 
to  get  rid  of  it  without  delay  by  calling  it 
"  metaphysical."  And  in  like  manner  the  word 
"  materialism  "  has  come  to  be  with  some  or- 
thodox people  a  general  term  of  abuse  for  any- 
thing which  they  do  not  happen  to  like.  I  was 
once  called  (in  print)  a  materialist,  for  saying 
that  there  are  no  trustworthy  dates  in  Greek 
history  prior  to  the  first  Olympiad  !  Some  wise- 
acre— whose  lectures  I  have  lately  seen  reported 
in  the  newspapers  —  solemnly  states  that  he 
shall  call  all  persons  materialists  who  do  not 
believe  in  the  freedom  of  the  will ;  which,  of 
course,  would  include  Jonathan  Edwards.  Then, 
besides  this  silly  use  of  language,  the  word  has 
undergone  some  legitimate  historical  changes  of 
meaning.  The  great  Dr.  Priestley,  whose  theism 
was  quite  unimpeachable,  avowed  himself  a  ma- 
terialist, because  he  did  not  regard  it  as  beyond 
the  power  of  an  omnipotent  Creator  to  endow 
matter  with  the  capacity  for  feeling  and  think- 
ing. It  seems  to  me  that  this  was  a  mental  atti- 
tude much  more  devout,  if  not  more  philosoph- 
ical, than  that  of  those  modern  theologians  who 
250 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

vie  with  the  ancient  Gnostics  in  heaping  abuse 
upon  poor  blind,  brute,  senseless,  inert  "  mat- 
ter." But  Priestley  was  by  no  means  a  material- 
ist in  the  sense  in  which  that  word  is  correctly 
used  in  philosophic  discussion  to-day.  It  is  not 
merely  in  the  vocabulary  of  theological  abuse 
that  the  terms  materialism  and  atheism  are 
closely  associated  ;  the  opinions  which  they  con- 
note are  really  linked  together  in  many  ways. 
In  former  times  it  was  customary  to  stigmatize 
the  colossal  generalizations  of  astronomers  and 
geologists  as  "  atheistical,"  because  they  sub- 
stituted divine  action  through  natural  law  for 
divine  action  through  supernatural  fiat,  which 
had  hitherto  been  commonly  regarded  as  the 
only  conceivable  kind  of  divine  action.  Nowa- 
days as  cultivated  minds  are  beginning  to  sur- 
mount this  old  difficulty,  the  bugbear  springs 
up  in  a  new  quarter.  Now  that  we  have  begun 
to  study  psychology  after  a  scientific  method, 
and  to  derive  valuable  assistance  from  the  in- 
vestigation of  nerve-cells  and  nerve-fibres,  and 
now  that  we  have  begun  to  apply  to  these 
studies  the  profoundest  generalizations  of  phys- 
ics and  chemistry  concerning  the  behaviour  of 
molecules  of  matter,  we  hear  so  much  talk  about 
undulations  and  discharges  and  nervous  con- 
nections that  many  worthy  people  seem  to  be 
afraid  of  seeing  it  proved  that  we  have  really  no 
psychical  life  at  all.  They  are  afraid  that  the 
251 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

human  soul  will  by  and  by  be  wholly  resolved 
into  an  affair  of  molecules  and  undulations  and 
unstable  equilibria,  and  so  forth ;  and  accord- 
ingly all  speculations  even  remotely  savouring 
of  physiological  psychology,  or  of  the  correla- 
tion of  vital  with  inorganic  motions,  are  forth- 
with stigmatized  as  "  materialistic."  Even  the 
Darwinian  theory  of  the  origin  of  species  is 
said  to  be  materialistic  by  implication,  inasmuch 
as  it  is  supposed  at  some  point  to  derive  the 
human  soul  from  the  psychical  part  of  a  brute 
animal,  and  at  some  other  point  to  derive  the 
psychical  part  of  the  brute  animal  from  some- 
thing that  is  not  psychical.  The  common  re- 
proach aimed  at  all  such  speculations  is  that  in 
one  way  or  another,  either  directly  or  by  im- 
plication, they  all  tend  toward  the  interpretation 
of  psychical  life  as  a  temporary  or  evanescent 
condition  of  matter,  and  thus  in  reality  banish 
soul  from  the  universe.  The  association  in  the 
popular  mind  between  materialism  and  atheism 
is  here  obvious  enough,  and  is  easily  justified. 
Philosophical  materialism  holds  that  matter  and 
the  motions  of  matter  make  up  the  sum  total  of 
existence,  and  that  what  we  know  as  psychical 
phenomena  in  man  and  other  animals  are  to  be 
interpreted  in  an  ultimate  analysis  as  simply  the 
peculiar  aspect  which  is  assumed  by  certain  enor- 
mously complicated  motions  of  matter.  This  is, 
I  believe,  a  strictly  correct  description  of  mate- 
252 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

rialism,  as  it  was  held  in  the  eighteenth  century 
by  La  Mettrie,  and  as  it  is  held  by  Biichner  to- 
day. Whoever  holds  such  views  as  these  con- 
cerning the  relations  of  matter  and  spirit  may  be 
properly  called  a  materialist,  and  no  doubt  there 
are  many  educated  people  who  hold  such  views, 
but  that  the  general  tendency-  of  modern  philo- 
sophic thought  is  toward  the  adoption  of  ma- 
terialism as  thus  defined,  I  emphatically  deny. 
On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  course 
of  modern  philosophy  is  distinctly  in  the  oppo- 
site direction,  and  that  materialism  is  hopelessly 
behind  the  age,  so  that  it  argues  a  much  more 
superficial  mind  and  a  much  more  imperfect 
education  to  agree  with  Biichner  to-day  than 
to  have  agreed  with  La  Mettrie  a  hundred  years 
ago. 

Bear  in  mind  that,  before  a  philosopher  can 
be  correctly  charged  with  materialism,  it  is  ab- 
solutely necessary  that  he  should  hold  that  psy- 
chical phenomena  —  such  as  love  and  hate,  or 
the  sensation  of  redness,  or  the  idea  of  virtue 
—  are  interpretable  in  terms  of  matter  and  mo- 
tion. Nothing  short  of  this  will  do.  It  is  not 
enough  that  he  should  hold  that,  along  with 
every  emotion  or  sensation  or  idea,  there  goes 
on  a  change  in  nerve-tissue  which  is  probably 
resolvable  into  some  form  of  undulatory  mo- 
tion ;  for  this  is  but  an  amplification  of  what 
we  all  begin  by  admitting  when  we  admit  that 
253 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

during  the  present  life  there  is  no  consciousness 
except  where  there  is  nerve-tissue.  If  it  is 
materialism  to  say  that  for  every  association  of 
ideas  there  is  established  a  system  of  paths  for 
discharges  between  two  or  more  groups  of 
nerve-cells,  it  is  equally  materialism  to  say  that 
a  pint  of  Scotch  whiskey  will  make  a  man 
drunk.  The  former  statement  enters  very  much 
more  into  detail  than  the  latter,  but  there  is  no 
other  essential  difference  between  them.  I  do 
not  wonder,  however,  that  people's  minds  are 
often  vague  and  confused  on  these  points,  for 
our  every-day  talk  is  full  of  materialistic  impli- 
cations. We  say,  for  example,  that  grief  makes 
us  weep,  and  the  statement  is  true  enough  for 
ordinary  purposes ;  but,  in  reality,  it  is  not  the 
grief  that  acts  upon  the  tear-glands.  The  grief 
is  something  absolutely  immaterial,  something 
absolutely  outside  the  circuit  of  physical  causa- 
tion. How  do  we  know  this?  How  do  we 
reach  such  a  conclusion  ?  We  reach  it  by  apply- 
ing to  the  subject  the  conception  of  the  correla- 
tion of  forces,  and  the  conception  of  the  atomic 
constitution  of  matter,  —  twin  conceptions  which 
lie  at  the  bottom  of  all  our  modern  scientific 
reasoning.  The  material  world  is  all  made  up 
of  systems  of  atoms  that  are  perpetually  mov- 
ing in  relation  to  one  another.  In  an  ultimate 
analysis,  every  material  object  is  such  a  system 
of  moving  atoms.  Every  living  organism  is  a 
254 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

system  of  systems  of  such  atoms,  in  myriad-fold 
orders  of  composition,  and  with  movements 
definitely  coordinated  in  myriad-fold  degrees  of 
complexity.  Now,  all  the  motion  that  goes  into 
any  organism,  latent  in  the  air  which  it  breathes 
and  the  food  which  it  assimilates,  must  come 
out  again  as  motion,  and  what  comes  out  must 
be  the  exact  equivalent  of  what  goes  in.  This 
is  what  the  doctrine  of  the  correlation  of  forces 
means  when  applied  to  the  living  organism  and 
to  the  nervous  system.  It  means,  too,  that  if 
we  were  able  to  trace  in  detail  the  career  of  any 
given  quantity  of  atomic  motion  between  the 
times  of  its  entering  and  its  leaving  the  organ- 
ism, we  should  find  through  all  its  innumerable 
transformations  an  exact  equivalence  preserved. 
But  this  means  that  the  motion  must  always  be 
a  motion  of  material  particles, —  something  that 
can  be  quantitatively  measured.  Once  introduce 
into  the  circuit  something  that  does  not  admit 
of  material  measurement,  such  as  a  sensation  of 
colour,  or  an  emotion  of  grief,  and  the  whole 
theory  falls  to  the  ground  at  once. 

When  a  given  quantity  of  atomic  motion  in 
the  gray  surface  of  the  brain  is  used  up,  its 
equivalent  must  appear  in  the  form  of  some 
other  atomic  motion,  and  cannot  have  been  a 
subjective  feeling ;  otherwise  it  is  idle  to  talk 
about  any  correlation  and  equivalence  of  forces 
in  the  case.  There  can  be  no  relation  of  equiv- 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

alence  between  a  sorrowful  feeling  and  a  motion 
of  matter  that  can  be  expressed  in  terms  of  foot- 
pounds. You  might  as  well  talk  about  a  crim- 
son taste  or  an  acid  sound.  When  you  weep, 
therefore,  it  is  not  grief,  but  the  cerebrum,  that 
acts  upon  the  tear-glands.  You  say  that  the 
grief  causes  the  tears,  because  you  are  conscious 
of  the  relation  of  sequence  between  the  subjec- 
tive emotion  and  the  objective  flow  of  tears, 
while  you  are  totally  unconscious  of  the  molec- 
ular movements  going  on  in  the  brain.  But,  in 
reality,  the  subjective  emotion  is  something 
purely  immaterial,  or,  if  you  choose  to  say  so, 
spiritual,  and  its  relation  to  what  goes  on  in  the 
brain  is  merely  a  relation  of  concomitance. 

I  have  illustrated  this  point  at  disproportion- 
ate length,  because  it  is  both  important  and 
difficult.  Until  this  point  is  perfectly  clear  in 
one's  mind,  any  discussion  of  the  alleged  mate- 
rialistic tendencies  of  modern  philosophy  is 
simply  a  waste  of  words.  It  is  very  clear  that 
modern  philosophy  does  show  a  decided  tend- 
ency toward  investigating  what  goes  on  in  the 
nervous  system  when  we  think  and  feel ;  and  it 
is  also  clear  that  modern  philosophy  considers 
itself  bound  to  study  the  nervous  system  as  a 
material  aggregate,  with  an  atomic  constitution, 
and  subject  to  the  same  physical  laws  with  other 
matter.  I  hope  I  have  now  made  it  equally 
clear  that  these  tendencies  of  modern  philoso- 
256 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

phy  are  just  the  reverse  of  materialistic.  So 
far  from  maintaining,  as  materialism  does,  that 
psychical  phenomena  are  interpretable  in  terms 
of  matter  and  motion,  this  modern  philosophy 
maintains  that  such  phenomena  are  absolutely 
immaterial,  —  that  they  stand,  as  I  said  before, 
quite  outside  the  circuit  of  physical  causation. 
If  the  world  were  peopled  with  automata,  if 
men  had  gone  on  from  the  beginning  like  pup- 
pets, eating,  and  drinking,  and  marrying,  work- 
ing and  fighting,  exactly  as  they  have  done, 
producing  human  history  in  all  its  details  ex- 
actly as  it  has  been  produced,  only  without  any 
consciousness,  without  any  sentient  life  what- 
ever, then  materialism  perhaps  would  afford  a 
satisfactory  explanation  of  the  world.  But  the 
moment  the  first  trace  of  conscious  intelligence 
is  introduced,  we  have  a  set  of  phenomena 
which  materialism  can  in  no  wise  account  for. 
The  latest  and  ripest  philosophic  speculation, 
therefore,  leaves  the  gulf  between  mind  and 
matter  quite  as  wide  and  impassable  as  it  ap- 
peared in  the  time  of  Descartes. 

But  while  materialism  is  thus  more  than  ever 
discredited  by  the  dominant  philosophy  of  our 
time,  and  while  it  will  no  doubt  continue  to 
be  more  and  more  discredited  with  each  future 
advance  in  philosophic  speculation,  I  see  no 
reason  why  there  should  not  always  be  a  certain 
amount  of  materialism  current  in  the  world. 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Very  likely  there  will  always  be  people  who  are 
colour-blind,  and  people  without  an  ear  for 
music.  So,  doubtless,  there  will  always  be  a 
class  of  excellent  people  with  a  fair  capacity 
for  understanding  scientific  generalizations,  but 
without  any  head  for  philosophy  ;  and  this  class 
will  produce  the  Biichners  and  La  Mettries  of 
the  future,  as  it  has  produced  them  in  the  past 
and  present.  Thus,  one  part  of  my  question  is 
disposed  of.  The  philosophy  of  the  future  will 
not  be  materialistic,  and  there  is  nothing  in  the 
dominant  philosophy  of  to-day  to  indicate  that 
religious  problems  will  not  continue  to  be  made 
'the  subjects  of  speculation.  I  recollect  once  ask- 
ing Mr.  Spencer's  opinion  on  some  question  of 
pure  ontology.  He  replied  that  he  had  no 
opinion  ;  not  because  his  mind  was  necessarily 
hostile  to  entertaining  such  questions,  but  simply 
because  he  was  so  entirely  occupied  in  working 
out  the  theory  of  evolution,  in  its  innumerable 
applications  to  the  world  of  phenomena,  that  he 
had  not  time  and  strength  left  to  expend  on 
problems  that  are  confessedly  insoluble.  This 
was  the  answer  of  a  true  man  of  science ;  and 
it  is  worth  repeating  for  the  benefit  of  those 
silly  people  who  think  it  is  not  enough  that 
Mr.  Spencer  should  have  made  greater  addi- 
tions to  the  sum  of  human  knowledge  than 
have  ever  been  made  by  any  other  man  since 
the  beginning  of  the  world,  and  complain  of 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

him  because  he  has  not  given  us  a  complete  and 
final  system  of  theology  into  the  bargain.  But 
Mr.  Spencer's  answer  further  illustrates  very 
well  the  philosophic  attitude  of  the  present  age. 
The  present  age  is  occupied,  above  all  things, 
in  investigating  the  intimate  constitution  of  the 
material  universe,  and  tracing  therefrom  its  past 
history  and  its  future  career.  The  conception  of 
evolution  is  everywhere  being  substituted  for 
that  of  special  creation ;  and  this  involves  the 
most  extensive  and  thorough  change  that  has 
ever  taken  place  in  men's  thoughts  about  the 
world  they  live  in.  For  the  present,  this  busi- 
ness absorbs  all  the  most  active  and  original 
minds,  so  that  no  time  is  left  for  metaphysical 
speculations.  We  are  becoming  wrapt  in  the 
study  of  origins,  as  the  men  of  the  thirteenth 
century  were  wrapt  in  the  study  of  particulars 
and  universals.  But  there  is  no  likelihood  that 
this  will  always  be  so.  By  and  by  all  educated 
people  will  be  evolutionists,  and  then  it  will  be 
seen,  more  clearly  than  it  is  now,  that  while  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  has  enormously  increased 
our  knowledge  of  the  phenomenal  universe,  it 
really  leaves  all  ultimate  questions  as  much  open 
for  discussion  as  they  ever  were.  It  is  Mr. 
Spencer  himself  who  has  said  that  every  new 
physical  problem  leads  at  once  to  a  metaphysi- 
cal problem  that  we  can  neither  solve  nor  elude. 
Solve  it  doubtless  we  cannot,  elude  it  we  also 
259 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

cannot,  and  so  discuss  it  we  will.  Such,  I  pre- 
sume, will  be  the  course  which  philosophy  will 
take  where  religious  questions  are  concerned. 

And  now  we  are  brought  to  the  other  part 
of  my  question.  Will  the  time  ever  come  again 
when  men  will  be  absorbed  in  questions  of  a 
transcendental  or  ontological  character,  as  Aqui- 
nas and  other  great  mediaeval  thinkers  were  ab- 
sorbed ?  It  seems  to  me  quite  possible  that  the 
interest  in  such  matters  may  again  become  as 
intense,  though  not  so  exclusive,  as  it  was  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  But  if  it  be  asked  whether  there 
can  ever  again  be  a  theological  renaissance  of 
such  a  character  that  men  shall  agree  to  surren- 
der their  right  of  private  judgment  on  purely 
religious  questions,  and  accept  the  teachings  of 
any  church,  the  reply  must  be  that  any  renais- 
sance of  this  sort  is  utterly  impossible.  The 
further  question,  whether  unity  of  belief  can  ever 
be  secured  in  any  other  way,  is  to  be  met  by  the 
assertion  that  unity  of  belief  is  no  longer  either 
possible  or  desirable.  Such  a  statement  as  this 
is  very  startling,  and  more  or  less  puzzling,  to 
many  people,  as  I  have  often  had  occasion  to 
observe ;  and  when  the  truth  of  it  has  come 
to  be  generally  and  thoroughly  realized,  it  will 
probably  be  the  greatest  step  in  religious  pro- 
gress that  has  ever  been  accomplished.  Once, 
we  know,  unity  of  belief  was  held  to  be  of  such 
supreme  importance  that  the  faintest  whisper 
260 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

of  dissent  must  be  punished  with  torture  and 
death.  I  have  elsewhere  sought  to  account,  on 
historical  grounds,  for  the  existence  of  this 
persecuting  spirit,  as  well  as  for  its  decline  in 
modern  times.  In  a  paper  on  "  The  Causes  of 
Persecution,"  I  showed  how  ancient  society  was 
pervaded  by  an  intense  feeling  of  corporate  re- 
sponsibility,—  a  feeling  that  the  whole  com- 
munity was  liable  to  be  punished  by  the  gods 
for  the  misdeeds  of  any  one  of  its  individual 
members.  In  early  times  this  feeling  of  corpo- 
rate responsibility,  taken  in  connection  with  the 
barbaric  theories  of  the  universe  then  current, 
was  the  mainstay  and  support  of  priesthoods. 
And  it  was  to  the  persistence  of  this  feeling 
down  through  the  Middle  Ages  that  the  hor- 
rors of  religious  persecution  were  chiefly  due. 
In  a  second  paper,  on  "  The  Origins  of  Pro- 
testantism," I  showed  that  the  feeling  of  cor- 
porate responsibility  had  its  legitimate  origin  in 
the  military  necessities  of  primitive  societies. 
In  ages  when  there  were  no  political  aggrega- 
tions of  men  larger  than  tribes,  and  when  the 
relations  between  tribes  were  chiefly  those  of 
chronic  warfare,  a  rude  and  savage  discipline, 
in  which  the  legal  existence  of  the  individual 
was  virtually  submerged  in  the  interests  of  the 
tribe,  was  absolutely  necessary.  The  feeling  that 
the  whole  tribe  was  liable  to  be  visited  with  de- 
feat or  famine  or  pestilence,  on  account  of  sac- 
261 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

rilege  committed  by  one  of  its  members,  was 
part  and  parcel  of  such  a  state  of  society.  This 
feeling  of  corporate  responsibility  must  have 
grown  in  strength  through  many  ages  by  nat- 
ural selection,  as  those  tribes  in  which  it  was 
most  effectively  developed  must  in  general  have 
shown  the  highest  capacity  for  social  organiza- 
tion, and  must  have  exterminated  or  enslaved 
their  neighbours.  Having  so  long  been  favoured 
by  natural  selection,  the  feeling  of  corporate  re- 
sponsibility for  conduct  and  opinion  became  so 
deeply  grounded  in  men's  minds  that  it  long 
survived  the  stage  of  social  development  in 
which  it  had  its  origin.  Most  conspicuous  and 
terrible  of  the  consequences  of  this  deeply  rooted 
feeling  has  been  that  fanatical  craving  for  unity 
of  belief  in  religious  matters  which  has  been  the 
source  of  some  of  the  worst  evils  that  have  af- 
flicted mankind.  But  among  the  many  changes 
which  have  affected  the  relations  of  the  individ- 
ual to  the  community,  with  the  growth  of  great 
and  complex  modern  societies,  there  has  come 
the  gradual  substitution  of  the  idea  of  individual 
responsibility  for  that  of  corporate  responsi- 
bility. From  this  point  of  view,  the  Protest- 
antism of  Luther  is  significant  mainly  as  a  revolt 
against  primeval  notions  of  the  relations  of  the 
individual  to  the  community,  which  have  long 
since  survived  their  usefulness.  Obviously,  the 
disintegration  of  orthodoxies  which  characterizes 
262 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

the  present  age  is  simply  the  further  develop- 
ment of  the  same  protest  in  behalf  of  individual 
responsibility  for  opinion.  And  to  those  who 
take  any  interest  in  the  present  discussion,  I 
hardly  need  argue  that  any  revival  of  the  methods 
of  Catholicism  could  never  occur,  except  as  the 
concomitant  of  a  wholly  improbable  retrogres- 
sion of  society  toward  the  barbaric  type.  The 
very  conception  of  an  infallible  church  is  so 
clearly  a  survival  from  primitive  religious  ideas, 
that  to  imagine  such  an  institution  presiding 
over  the  society  of  the  future  involves  a  most 
grotesque  anachronism.  Nevertheless,  the  uses 
of  the  Catholic  Church  are  such  that  it  is  likely 
still  to  survive  for  a  very  long  time,  though 
with  diminishing  influence;  and  as  it  affords 
a  refuge  for  such  earnest  and  thoughtful  souls 
as  find  the  atmosphere  of  free  discussion  too 
bracing,  it  will  probably  long  continue  to  re- 
ceive accessions  from  the  ranks  of  the  various 
Protestant  orthodoxies  that  are  now  so  rapidly 
disintegrating. 

With  the  fading  away  of  the  old  notion  of 
corporate  responsibility  for  opinion,  the  value  at- 
tached to  unity  of  belief  has  greatly  diminished, 
and  attempts  to  secure  such  unity  by  violent 
means  have  become  generally  discredited.  It  is 
at  last  beginning  to  be  apprehended  that  if  unity 
of  belief  is  to  have  any  real  value,  it  can  only  be 
when  it  is  the  result  of  the  free  working  of  difFer- 
263 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ent  minds.  But  unity  of  belief  in  religious  mat- 
ters is  not  very  likely  to  be  reached  in  any  such 
way,  for  the  conditions  of  the  case  are  totally 
different  from  those  of  scientific  discussion.  The 
difference  may  be  best  appreciated  by  recall- 
ing the  useful  distinction  drawn  by  positivism 
between  science  and  metaphysics.  According 
to  positivism,  the  essential  distinction  between  a 
scientific  hypothesis,  such  as  the  undulatory  the- 
ory of  light,  and  a  metaphysical  hypothesis,  such 
as  the  Leibnitzian  theory  of  preestablished  har- 
mony, is  that  the  one  admits  of  verification  — 
whether  by  observation,  experiment,  or  deduc- 
tion—  while  the  other  does  not.  Or,  from 
another  point  of  view,  the  one  may  be  made  a 
working  hypothesis  from  which  independent  in- 
quirers will  arrive  at  mutually  congruous  results, 
while  the  other  cannot.  This  distinction  is  one 
of  the  very  few  points  made  by  positivism  which 
have  been  generally  adopted  into  modern  phi- 
losophy ;  but  the  use  which  positivists  have  made 
of  it  is  by  no  means  philosophical.  Comte  him- 
self set  an  inordinate  value  upon  unity  of  belief, 
and  in  this  his  disciples  have  generally  followed 
him  ;  and  the  way  in  which  they  propose  to  se- 
cure such  unity  is  simply  to  ignore  all  problems 
whatever  in  which  scientific  methods  of  demon- 
stration are  not  accessible.  This  seems  like  pay- 
ing an  exorbitant  price  for  a  privilege  of  very 
doubtful  value.  But  without  following  the  pos- 
264 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

itivists  in  this,  we  may  admit  the  usefulness  of 
their  distinction  between  problems  that  tran- 
scend the  limits  of  scientific  demonstration  and 
problems  that  lie  within  those  limits.  Clearly, 
if  I  hold  one  opinion  concerning  the  passage  of 
light  through  certain  crystals,  and  my  neigh- 
bour holds  a  different  or  contrary  opinion,  I  am 
entitled  to  expect  either  that  he  can  be  brought 
to  adopt  my  opinion,  or  that  I  can  be  brought 
to  adopt  his.  Means  of  verification  must  exist ; 
and  even  if  the  question  cannot  be  settled  to- 
day, we  have  no  doubt  that  it  can  be  settled  by 
and  by.  But  if  I  hold  one  opinion  concerning 
the  conscious  existence  of  the  soul  after  death, 
while  my  neighbour  holds  a  contrary  opinion,  I 
am  not  entitled  to  expect  that  we  can  ever  be 
brought  to  an  agreement.  For  the  question 
confessedly  transcends  the  limits  of  scientific 
demonstration.  Yet  in  spite  of  all  that,  one  of 
our  contrary  opinions,  and  possibly  both,  may 
contain  some  adumbration  of  a  truth.  And 
more  than  a  faint  glimmering  of  truth  we  can 
hardly  expect  to  be  contained  in  any  of  our 
opinions  on  religious  matters,  for  the  problems 
are  too  vast  when  compared  with  our  means  of 
dealing  with  them.  Hence,  instead  of  condemn- 
ing variety  of  belief  on  such  subjects,  we  should 
rather  welcome  each  fresh  suggestion  as  possibly 
containing  some  adumbration  of  a  truth  which 
we  have  hitherto  overlooked. 

26J 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

And  thus  we  arrive  at  last  at  the  true  lesson  of 
Protestantism,  which  is  simply  this :  that  reli- 
gious belief  is  something  which  in  no  way  con- 
cerns society,  but  which  concerns  only  the  indi- 
vidual. In  all  other  relations  the  individual  is 
more  or  less  responsible  to  society  ;  but,  as  for 
his  religious  belief  and  his  religious  life,  these  are 
matters  which  lie  solely  between  himself  and  his 
God.  On  such  subjects  no  man  may  rightfully 
chide  his  neighbour,  or  call  him  foolish  ;  for,  in 
presence  of  the  transcendent  Reality,  the  fool- 
ishness of  one  man  differs  not  much  from  the 
wisdom  of  another.  When  this  lesson  shall  have 
been  duly  comprehended  and  taken  to  heart,  I 
make  no  doubt  that  religious  speculation  will 
continue  to  go  on  :  but  such  words  as  "  infidel- 
ity "  and  "  heresy,"  the  present  currency  of  which 
serves  only  to  show  how  the  remnants  of  prim- 
itive barbaric  thought  still  cling  to  us  and  ham- 
per our  progress  —  such  words  will  have  become 
obsolete,  and  perhaps  unintelligible,  save  to  the 
philosophic  student  of  history.  In  discussion 
conducted  in  such  a  mood,  there  will,  no  doubt, 
be  a  great  lack  of  finality.  But  the  craving  for 
finality  is  itself,  in  various  degrees,  an  instinct 
of  the  uneducated  man,  of  the  child,  of  the  sav- 
age, and  perhaps  of  the  brute.  To  feel  that  the 
last  word  has  been  said  on  any  subject  is  not 
a  desideratum  with  the  true  philosopher,  who 
knows  full  well  that  the  truth  he  announces  to- 
266 


TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

day  will  open  half  a  dozen  questions  where  it 
settles  one,  and  will  presently  be  variously  qual- 
ified, and  at  last  absorbed  in  some  wider  and 
deeper  truth.  When  all  this  shall  have  come  to 
be  realized,  and  shall  have  been  made  part  and 
parcel  of  the  daily  mental  habit  of  men,  then 
our  human  treatment  of  religion  will  no  longer 
be  what  it  has  too  often  been  in  the  past,  —  a 
wretched  squabble,  fit  only  for  the  demons  of 
Malebolge,  —  but  it  will  have  come  to  be  like 
the  sweet  discourse  of  saints  in  Dante's  "  Para- 
dise." 

Stptcmber,  1 88 1. 


267 


XI 

EVOLUTION   AND   RELIGION1 

MR.  PRESIDENT:2  The  thought 
which  you  have  uttered  suggests  so 
many  and  such  fruitful  themes  of  dis- 
cussion that  a  whole  evening  would  not  suffice 
to  enumerate  them,  while  to  illustrate  them  pro- 
perly would  seem  to  require  an  octavo  volume 
rather  than  a  talk  of  six  or  eight  minutes,  es- 
pecially when  such  a  talk  comes  just  after  din- 
ner. The  Amazulu  saying  which  you  have  cited, 
that  those  who  have  "  stuffed  bodies  "  cannot 
see  hidden  things,  seems  peculiarly  applicable 
to  any  attempt  to  discuss  the  mysteries  of  re- 
ligion at  the  present  moment ;  and,  after  the 
additional  warning  we  have  just  had  from  our 
good  friend  Mr.  Schurz,  I  hardly  know  whether 
I  ought  to  venture  to  approach  so  vast  a  theme. 
There  are  one  or  two  points  of  signal  impor- 
tance, however,  to  which  I  may  at  least  call  at- 
tention for  a  moment.  It  is  a  matter  which  has 
long  since  taken  deep  hold  of  my  mind,  and  I 

1  Speech  at  the  farewell  dinner  given  to  Herbert  Spencer, 
in  New  York,  November  9,  1882. 
•  Hon.  W.  M.  Evarts. 

268 


EVOLUTION  AND  RELIGION 

am  glad  to  have  a  chance  to  say  something 
about  it  on  so  fitting  an  occasion.  We  have 
met  here  this  evening  to  do  homage  to  a  dear 
and  noble  teacher  and  friend,  and  it  is  well  that 
we  should  choose  this  time  to  recall  the  various 
aspects  of  the  immortal  work  by  which  he  has 
earned  the  gratitude  of  a  world.  The  work 
which  Herbert  Spencer  has  done  in  organizing 
the  different  departments  of  human  knowledge, 
so  as  to  present  the  widest  generalizations  of  all 
the  sciences  in  a  new  and  wonderful  light,  as 
flowing  out  of  still  deeper  and  wider  truths  con- 
cerning the  universe  as  a  whole ;  the  great  num- 
ber of  profound  generalizations  which  he  has 
established  incidentally  to  the  pursuit  of  this 
main  object ;  the  endlessly  rich  and  suggestive 
thoughts  which  he  has  thrown  out  in  such  pro- 
fusion by  the  wayside  all  along  the  course  of 
this  great  philosophical  enterprise,  —  all  this 
work  is  so  manifest  that  none  can  fail  to  recog- 
nize it.  It  is  work  of  the  calibre  of  that  which 
Aristotle  and  Newton  did.  Though  coming  in 
this  latter  age,  it  as  far  surpasses  their  work  in 
its  vastness  of  performance  as  the  railway  sur- 
passes the  sedan-chair,  or  as  the  telegraph  sur- 
passes the  carrier-pigeon. 

But  it  is  not  of  this  side  of  our  teacher's  work 

that  I  wish  to  speak,  but  of  a  side  of  it  that  has 

hitherto  met  with  less  general  recognition.  There 

are  some  people  who  seem  to  think  that  it  is 

269 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

not  enough  that  Mr.  Spencer  should  have  made 
all  these  priceless  contributions  to  human  know- 
ledge, but  actually  complain  of  him  for  not  giv- 
ing us  a  complete  and  exhaustive  system  of 
theology  into  the  bargain.  What  I  wish,  there- 
fore, to  point  out  is  that  Mr.  Spencer's  work  on 
the  side  of  religion  will  be  seen  to  be  no  less 
important  than  his  work  on  the  side  of  science, 
when  once  its  religious  implications  shall  have 
been  fully  and  consistently  unfolded. 

If  we  look  at  all  the  systems  or  forms  of  re- 
ligion of  which  we  have  any  knowledge,  we 
shall  find  that  they  differ  in  many  superficial 
features.  They  differ  in  many  of  the  transcen- 
dental doctrines  which  they  respectively  preach, 
and  in  many  of  the  rules  of  conduct  which  they 
respectively  lay  down  for  men's  guidance.  They 
assert  different  things  about  the  universe,  and 
they  enjoin  or  prohibit  different  kinds  of  be- 
haviour on  the  part  of  their  followers.  The 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  which  to  many  Chris- 
tians is  the  most  sacred  of  mysteries,  is  to  all 
Mohammedans  the  foulest  of  blasphemies.  The 
Brahman's  conscience  would  be  more  troubled 
if  he  were  to  kill  a  cow  by  accident  than  if  he 
were  to  swear  to  a  lie  or  steal  a  purse.  The 
Turk,  who  sees  no  wrong  in  bigamy,  would 
shrink  from  the  sin  of  eating  pork.  But,  amid 
all  such  surface  differences  we  find  throughout 
all  known  religions  two  points  of  substantial 
270 


EVOLUTION  AND  RELIGION 

agreement.  And  these  two  points  of  agreement 
will  be  admitted  by  modern  civilized  men  to  be 
of  far  greater  importance  than  the  innumerable 
differences  of  detail.  All  religions  agree  in  the 
two  following  assertions,  one  of  which  is  of 
speculative  and  one  of  which  is  of  ethical  im- 
port. One  of  them  serves  to  sustain  and  har- 
monize our  thoughts  about  the  world  we  live  in 
and  our  place  in  that  world ;  the  other  serves 
to  uphold  us  in  our  efforts  to  do  each  what  we 
can  to  make  human  life  more  sweet,  more  full 
of  goodness  and  beauty,  than  we  find  it.  The 
first  of  these  assertions  is  the  proposition  that 
the  things  and  events  of  the  world  do  not  exist 
or  occur  blindly  or  irrelevantly,  but  that  all, 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  time,  and 
throughout  the  farthest  sweep  of  illimitable 
space,  are  connected  together  as  the  orderly 
manifestations  of  a  divine  Power,  and  that  this 
divine  Power  is  something  outside  of  ourselves, 
and  upon  it  our  own  existence  from  moment  to 
moment  depends.  The  second  of  these  asser- 
tions is  the  proposition  that  men  ought  to  do 
certain  things,  and  ought  to  refrain  from  doing 
certain  other  things ;  and  that  the  reason  why 
some  things  are  wrong  to  do  and  other  things 
are  right  to  do  is  in  some  mysterious  but  very 
real  way  connected  with  the  existence  and  nature 
of  this  divine  Power,  which  reveals  itself  in  every 
great  and  every  tiny  thing,  without  which  not  a 
271 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

star  courses  in  its  mighty  orbit,  and  not  a  spar- 
row falls  to  the  ground.  Matthew  Arnold  once 
summed  up  these  two  propositions  very  well, 
when  he  defined  God  as  "  an  eternal  Power,  not 
ourselves,  that  makes  for  righteousness."  This 
twofold  assertion,  that  there  is  an  eternal  Power 
that  is  not  ourselves,  and  that  this  Power  makes 
for  righteousness,  is  to  be  found,  either  in  a 
rudimentary  or  in  a  highly  developed  state,  in 
all  known  religions.  In  such  religions  as  those 
of  the  Eskimos  or  of  your  friends,  the  Amazu- 
lus,  Mr.  President,  this  assertion  is  found  in  a 
rudimentary  shape  on  each  of  its  two  sides, — 
the  speculative  side  and  the  ethical  side ;  in  such 
religions  as  Buddhism  or  Judaism,  it  is  found 
in  a  highly  developed  shape  on  both  its  sides. 
But  the  main  point  is  that  in  all  religions  you 
find  it  in  some  shape  or  other. 

I  said,  a  moment  ago,  that  modern  civilized 
men  will  all  acknowledge  that  this  two-sided 
assertion  in  which  all  religions  agree  is  of  far 
greater  importance  than  any  of  the  superficial 
points  in  which  religions  differ.  It  is  really  of 
much  more  concern  to  us  that  there  is  an  eter- 
nal Power,  not  ourselves,  that  makes  for  right- 
eousness, than  that  such  a  Power  is  onefold  or 
threefold  in  its  metaphysical  nature,  or  that  we 
ought  not  to  play  cards  on  Sunday  or  to  eat 
meat  on  Friday.  No  one,  I  believe,  will  deny 
so  simple  and  clear  a  statement  as  this.  But  it 
272 


EVOLUTION  AND  RELIGION 

is  not  only  we  modern  men,  who  call  ourselves 
enlightened,  that  will  agree  to  this.  I  doubt 
not  even  the  narrow-minded  bigots  of  days  now 
happily  gone  by  would  have  been  made  to  agree 
to  it,  if  they  could  have  had  some  doggedly  per- 
sistent Sokrates  to  cross-question  them.  Calvin 
was  willing  to  burn  Servetus  for  doubting  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  but  I  do  not  suppose 
that  even  Calvin  would  have  argued  that  the 
belief  in  God's  threefold  nature  was  more  fun- 
damental than  the  belief  in  his  existence  and 
his  goodness.  The  philosophical  error  with  him 
was  that  he  could  not  dissociate  the  less  impor- 
tant doctrine  from  the  more  important  doctrine, 
and  the  fate  of  the  latter  seemed  to  him  wrapped 
up  with  the  fate  of  the  former.  I  cite  this 
merely  as  a  typical  example.  What  men  in  past 
times  have  really  valued  in  their  religion  has 
been  the  universal  twofold  assertion  that  there 
is  a  God  who  is  pleased  by  the  sight  of  the  just 
man  and  is  angry  with  the  wicked  every  day ; 
and  when  men  have  fought  with  one  another, 
and  murdered  or  calumniated  one  another  for 
heresy  about  the  Trinity  or  about  eating  meat 
on  Friday,  it  has  been  because  they  have  sup- 
posed belief  in  the  non-essential  doctrines  to  be 
inseparably  connected  with  belief  in  the  essen- 
tial doctrine.  In  spite  of  all  this,  however,  it  is 
true  that  in  the  mind  of  the  uncivilized  man  the 
great  central  truths  of  religion  are  so  densely 
273 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

overlaid  with  hundreds  of  trivial  notions  respect- 
ing dogma  and  ritual  that  his  perception  of  the 
great  central  truths  is  obscure.  These  great 
central  truths,  indeed,  need  to  be  clothed  in  a 
dress  of  little  rites  and  superstitions,  in  order  to 
take  hold  of  his  dull  and  untrained  intelligence. 
But,  in  proportion  as  men  become  more  civi- 
lized, and  learn  to  think  more  accurately,  and  to 
take  wider  views  of  life,  just  so  do  they  come 
to  value  the  essential  truths  of  religion  more 
highly,  while  they  attach  less  and  less  importance 
to  superficial  details. 

Having  thus  seen  what  is  meant  by  the  es- 
sential truths  of  religion,  it  is  very  easy  to  see 
what  the  attitude  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is 
toward  these  essential  truths.  It  asserts  and  re- 
iterates them  both  ;  and  it  asserts  them  not  as 
dogmas  handed  down  to  us  by  priestly  tradition, 
not  as  mysterious  intuitive  convictions  of  which 
we  can  render  no  intelligible  account  to  our- 
selves, but  as  scientific  truths  concerning  the 
innermost  constitution  of  the  universe,  truths 
that  have  been  disclosed  by  observation  and  re- 
flection, like  other  scientific  truths,  and  that  ac- 
cordingly harmonize  naturally  and  easily  with 
the  whole  body  of  our  knowledge.  The  doctrine 
of  evolution  asserts,  as  the  widest  and  deepest 
truth  which  the  study  of  nature  can  disclose  to 
us,  that  there  exists  a  Power  to  which  no  limit 
in  time  or  space  is  conceivable,  and  that  all  the 
274 


EVOLUTION  AND  RELIGION 

phenomena  of  the  universe,  whether  they  be 
what  we  call  material  or  what  we  call  spiritual 
phenomena,  are  manifestations  of  this  infinite 
and  eternal  Power.  Now,  this  assertion,  which 
Mr.  Spencer  has  so  elaborately  set  forth  as  a 
scientific  truth,  —  nay,  as  the  ultimate  truth  of 
science,  as  the  truth  upon  which  the  whole  struc- 
ture of  human  knowledge  philosophically  rests, 
—  this  assertion  is  identical  with  the  assertion 
of  an  eternal  Power,  not  ourselves,  that  forms 
the  speculative  basis  of  all  religions.  When 
Carlyle  speaks  of  the  universe  as  in  very  truth 
the  star-domed  city  of  God,  and  reminds  us  that 
through  every  crystal  and  through  every  grass- 
blade,  but  most  through  every  living  soul,  the 
glory  of  a  present  God  still  beams,  he  means 
pretty  much  the  same  thing  that  Mr.  Spencer 
means,  save  that  he  speaks  with  the  language 
of  poetry,  with  language  coloured  by  emotion, 
and  not  with  the  precise,  formal,  and  colourless 
language  of  science.  By  many  critics  who  for- 
get that  names  are  but  the  counters  rather  than 
the  hard  money  of  thought,  objections  have 
been  raised  to  the  use  of  such  a  phrase  as  the 
Unknowable  whereby  to  describe  the  power 
that  is  manifested  in  every  event  of  the  universe. 
Yet,  when  the  Hebrew  prophet  declared  that 
"  by  Him  were  laid  the  foundations  of  the  deep," 
but  reminded  us,  "  Who  by  searching  can  find 
Him  out?"  he  meant  pretty  much  what  Mr, 
275 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Spencer  means  when  he  speaks  of  a  Power  that 
is  inscrutable  in  itself,  yet  is  revealed  from  mo- 
ment to  moment  in  every  throb  of  the  mighty 
rhythmic  life  of  the  universe. 

And  this  brings  me  to  the  last  and  most  im- 
portant point  of  all.  What  says  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  with  regard  to  the  ethical  side  of  this 
twofold  assertion  that  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all 
religion  ?  Though  we  cannot  fathom  the  nature 
of  the  inscrutable  Power  that  animates  the 
world,  we  know,  nevertheless,  a  great  many 
things  that  it  does.  Does  this  eternal  Power, 
then,  work  for  righteousness  ?  Is  there  a  divine 
sanction  for  holiness  and  a  divine  condemnation 
for  sin  ?  Are  the  principles  of  right  living 
really  connected  with  the  intimate  constitution 
of  the  universe  ?  If  the  answer  of  science  to 
these  questions  be  affirmative,  then  the  agree- 
ment with  religion  is  complete,  both  on  the 
speculative  and  on  the  practical  sides  ;  and  that 
phantom  which  has  been  the  abiding  terror  of 
timid  and  superficial  minds  —  that  phantom  of 
the  hostility  between  religion  and  science  —  is 
exorcised  now  and  forever. 

Now  science  began  to  return  a  decisively  af- 
firmative answer  to  such  questions  as  these, 
when  it  began,  with  Mr.  Spencer,  to  explain 
moral  beliefs  and  moral  sentiments  as  products 
of  evolution.  For  clearly,  when  you  say  of  a 
moral  belief  or  a  moral  sentiment  that  it  is  a 
276 


EVOLUTION  AND  RELIGION 

product  of  evolution,  you  imply  that  it  is  some- 
thing which  the  universe  through  untold  ages 
has  been  labouring  to  bring  forth,  and  you  as- 
cribe to  it  a  value  proportionate  to  the  enor- 
mous effort  that  it  has  cost  to  produce  it.  Still 
more,  when  with  Mr.  Spencer  we  study  the 
principles  of  right  living  as  part  and  parcel  of 
the  whole  doctrine  of  the  development  of  life 
upon  the  earth ;  when  we  see  that,  in  an  ulti- 
mate analysis,  that  is  right  which  tends  to  en- 
hance fulness  of  life,  and  that  is  wrong  which 
tends  to  detract  from  fulness  of  life,  —  we  then 
see  that  the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong 
is  rooted  in  the  deepest  foundations  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  we  see  that  the  very  same  forces,  subtle 
and  exquisite  and  profound,  which  brought  upon 
the  scene  the  primal  germs  of  life  and  caused 
them  to  unfold,  which  through  countless  ages  of 
struggle  and  death  have  cherished  the  life  that 
could  live  more  perfectly  and  destroyed  the  life 
that  could  only  live  less  perfectly,  until  Hu- 
manity, with  all  its  hopes  and  fears  and  aspira- 
tions, has  come  into  being  as  the  crown  of  all 
this  stupendous  work,  —  we  see  that  these  very 
same  subtle  and  exquisite  forces  have  wrought 
into  the  very  fibres  of  the  universe  those  prin- 
ciples of  right  living  which  it  is  man's  highest 
function  to  put  into  practice.  The  theoretical 
sanction  thus  given  to  right  living  is  incompar- 
ably the  most  powerful  that  has  ever  been  as- 
277 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

signed  in  any  philosophy  of  ethics.  Human  re- 
sponsibility is  made  more  strict  and  solemn  than 
ever,  when  the  eternal  Power  that  lives  in  every 
event  of  the  universe  is  thus  seen  to  be  in  the 
deepest  possible  sense  the  author  of  the  moral 
law  that  should  guide  our  lives,  and  in  obedience 
to  which  lies  our  only  guarantee  of  the  happi- 
ness which  is  incorruptible,  —  which  neither  in- 
evitable misfortune  nor  unmerited  obloquy  can 
ever  take  away. 

I  have  here  but  barely  touched  upon  a  rich 
and  suggestive  topic.  When  this  subject  shall 
once  have  been  expounded  and  illustrated  with 
due  thoroughness,  —  as  I  earnestly  hope  it  will 
be  within  the  next  few  years,  —  then  I  am  sure 
it  will  be  generally  acknowledged  that  our  great 
teacher's  services  to  religion  have  been  no  less 
signal  than  his  services  to  science,  unparalleled 
as  these  have  been  in  all  the  history  of  the  world. 

No-vembtr,  1882. 


278 


XII 

THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY1 

WHAT  is  the  Meaning  of  Infancy? 
What  is  the  meaning  of  the  fact  that 
man  is  born  into  the  world  more 
helpless  than  any  other  creature,  and  needs  for 
a  much  longer  season  than  any  other  living  thing 
the  tender  care  and  wise  counsel  of  his  elders  ? 
It  is  one  of  the  most  familiar  of  facts  that  man, 
alone  among  animals,  exhibits  a  capacity  for  pro- 
gress. That  man  is  widely  different  from  other 
animals  in  the  length  of  his  adolescence  and  the 
utter  helplessness  of  his  babyhood  is  an  equally 
familiar  fact.  Now  between  these  two  common- 
place facts  is  there  any  connection  ?  Is  it  a  mere 
accident  that  the  creature  which  is  distinguished 
as  progressive  should  also  be  distinguished  as 
coming  slowly  to  maturity,  or  is  there  a  reason 
lying  deep  down  in  the  nature  of  things  why 

1  A  very  brief  restatement,  in  simple  language,  of  the  main 
points  of  the  theory  of  man's  origin  first  suggested  in  my  lec- 
tures at  Harvard  University  in  1871,  and  worked  out  in 
Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  part  ii.,  chapters  xvi.,  xxi., 
and  xxii.  [See  also  The  Destiny  of  Man  for  an  amplifica- 
tion.] 

279 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

this  should  be  so  ?  I  think  it  can  be  shown, 
with  very  few  words,  that  between  these  two 
facts  there  is  a  connection  that  is  deeply  in- 
wrought with  the  processes  by  which  life  has 
been  evolved  upon  the  earth.  It  can  be  shown 
that  man's  progressiveness  and  the  length  of 
his  infancy  are  but  two  sides  of  one  and  the 
same  fact ;  and  in  showing  this,  still  more  will 
appear.  It  will  appear  that  it  was  the  lengthen- 
ing of  infancy  which  ages  ago  gradually  con- 
verted our  forefathers  from  brute  creatures  into 
human  creatures.  It  is  babyhood  that  has  made 
man  what  he  is.  The  simple  unaided  operation 
of  natural  selection  could  never  have  resulted 
in  the  origination  of  the  human  race.  Natural 
selection  might  have  gone  on  forever  improving 
the  breed  of  the  highest  animal  in  many  ways, 
but  it  could  never  unaided  have  started  the  pro- 
cess of  civilization  or  have  given  to  man  those 
peculiar  attributes  in  virtue  of  which  it  has  been 
well  said  that  the  difference  between  him  and 
the  highest  of  apes  immeasurably  transcends  in 
value  the  difference  between  an  ape  and  a  blade 
of  grass.  In  order  to  bring  about  that  wonder- 
ful event,  the  Creation  of  Man,  natural  selec- 
tion had  to  call  in  the  aid  of  other  agencies,  and 
the  chief  of  these  agencies  was  the  gradual 
lengthening  of  babyhood. 

Such  is  the  point  which  I  wish  to  illustrate 
in  few  words,  and  to  indicate  some  of  its  bear- 
280 


THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY 

ings  on  the  history  of  human  progress.  Let  us 
first  observe  what  it  was  that  lengthened  the 
infancy  of  the  highest  animal,  for  then  we  shall 
be  the  better  able  to  understand  the  character 
of  the  prodigious  effects  which  this  infancy  has 
wrought.  A  few  familiar  facts  concerning  the 
method  in  which  men  learn  how  to  do  things 
will  help  us  here. 

When  we  begin  to  learn  to  play  the  piano, 
we  have  to  devote  much  time  and  thought  to 
the  adjustment  and  movement  of  our  fingers 
and  to  the  interpretation  of  the  vast  and  com- 
plicated multitude  of  symbols  which  make  up 
the  printed  page  of  music  that  stands  before  us. 
For  a  long  time,  therefore,  our  attempts  are 
feeble  and  stammering  and  they  require  the  full 
concentrated  power  of  the  mind.  Yet  a  trained 
pianist  will  play  a  new  piece  of  music  at  sight, 
and  perhaps  have  so  much  attention  to  spare 
that  he  can  talk  with  you  at  the  same  time. 
What  an  enormous  number  of  mental  acquisi- 
tions have  in  this  case  become  almost  instinctive 
or  automatic  !  It  is  just  so  in  learning  a  foreign 
language,  and  it  was  just  the  same  when  in 
childhood  we  learned  to  walk,  to  talk,  and  to 
write.  It  is  just  the  same,  too,  in  learning  to 
think  about  abstruse  subjects.  What  at  first 
strains  the  attention  to  the  utmost,  and  often 
wearies  us,  comes  at  last  to  be  done  without 
effort  and  almost  unconsciously.  Great  minds 
281 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

thus  travel  over  vast  fields  of  thought  with  an 
ease  of  which  they  are  themselves  unaware.  Dr. 
Nathaniel  Bowditch  once  said  that  in  translating 
the  "  Mecanique  Celeste,"  he  had  come  upon 
formulas  which  Laplace  introduced  with  the 
word  "  obviously,"  where  it  took  nevertheless 
many  days  of  hard  study  to  supply  the  inter- 
mediate steps  through  which  that  transcendent 
mind  had  passed  with  one  huge  leap  of  infer- 
ence. At  some  time  in  his  youth  no  doubt  La- 
place had  to  think  of  these  things,  just  as  Ru- 
binstein had  once  to  think  how  his  fingers 
should  be  placed  on  the  keys  of  the  piano  ;  but 
what  was  once  the  object  of  conscious  attention 
comes  at  last  to  be  well-nigh  automatic,  while 
the  flight  of  the  conscious  mind  goes  on  ever 
to  higher  and  vaster  themes. 

Let  us  now  take  a  long  leap  from  the  high- 
est level  of  human  intelligence  to  the  mental 
life  of  a  turtle  or  a  codfish.  In  what  does  the 
mental  life  of  such  creatures  consist?  It  con- 
sists of  a  few  simple  acts  mostly  concerned  with 
the  securing  of  food  and  the  avoiding  of  danger, 
and  these  few  simple  acts  are  repeated  with  un- 
varying monotony  during  the  whole  lifetime 
of  these  creatures.  Consequently  these  acts  are 
performed  with  great  ease  and  are  attended  with 
very  little  consciousness,  and  moreover  the 
capacity  to  perform  them  is  transmitted  from 
parent  to  offspring  as  completely  as  the  capacity 
282 


THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY 

of  the  stomach  to  digest  food  is  transmitted. 
In  all  animals  the  new-born  stomach  needs  but 
the  contact  with  food  in  order  to  begin  digest- 
ing, and  the  new-born  lungs  need  but  the  con- 
tact with  air  in  order  to  begin  to  breathe.  The 
capacity  for  performing  these  perpetually  re- 
peated visceral  actions  is  transmitted  in  perfec- 
tion. All  the  requisite  nervous  connections  are 
fully  established  during  the  brief  embryonic 
existence  of  each  creature.  In  the  case  of  lower 
animals  it  is  almost  as  much  so  with  the  few 
simple  actions  which  make  up  the  creature's 
mental  life.  The  bird  known  as  the  fly-catcher 
no  sooner  breaks  the  egg  than  it  will  snap  at 
and  catch  a  fly.  This  action  is  not  so  very  sim- 
ple, but  because  it  is  something  the  bird  is  al- 
ways doing,  being  indeed  one  out  of  the  very 
few  things  that  this  bird  ever  does,  the  nervous 
connections  needful  for  doing  it  are  all  estab- 
lished before  birth,  and  nothing  but  the  pre- 
sence of  the  fly  is  required  to  set  the  operation 
going. 

With  such  creatures  as  the  codfish,  the  turtle, 
or  the  fly-catcher,  there  is  accordingly  nothing 
that  can  properly  be  called  infancy.  With  them 
the  sphere  of  education  is  extremely  limited. 
They  get  their  education  before  they  are  born. 
In  other  words,  heredity  does  everything  for 
them,  education  nothing.  The  career  of  the  in- 
dividual is  predetermined  by  the  careers  of  his 

283 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ancestors,  and  he  can  do  almost  nothing  to  vary 
it.  The  life  of  such  creatures  is  conservatism 
cut  and  dried,  and  there  is  nothing  progressive 
about  them. 

In  what  I  just  said  I  left  an  "  almost."  There 
is  a  great  deal  of  saving  virtue  in  that  little  ad- 
verb. Doubtless  even  animals  low  in  the  scale 
possess  some  faint  traces  of  educability  ;  but 
they  are  so  very  slight  that  it  takes  geologic  ages 
to  produce  an  appreciable  result.  In  all  the  in- 
numerable wanderings,  fights,  upturnings  and 
cataclysms  of  the  earth's  stupendous  career,  each 
creature  has  been  summoned  under  penalty  of 
death  to  use  what  little  wit  he  may  have  had, 
and  the  slightest  trace  of  mental  flexibility  is  of 
such  priceless  value  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
that  natural  selection  must  always  have  seized 
upon  it,  and  sedulously  hoarded  and  transmitted 
it  for  coming  generations  to  strengthen  and  in- 
crease. With  the  lapse  of  geologic  time  the  up- 
per grades  of  animal  intelligence  have  doubtless 
been  raised  higher  and  higher  through  natural 
selection.  The  warm-blooded  mammals  and 
birds  of  to-day  no  doubt  surpass  the  cold- 
blooded dinosaurs  of  the  Jurassic  age  in  mental 
qualities  as  they  surpass  them  in  physical  struc- 
ture. From  the  codfish  and  turtle  of  ancient 
family  to  the  modern  lion,  dog,  and  monkey,  it 
is  a  very  long  step  upward.  The  mental  life  of 
a  warm-blooded  animal  is  a  very  different  affair 
284 


THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY 

from  that  of  reptiles  and  fishes.  A  squirrel  or  a 
bear  does  a  good  many  things  in  the  course  of 
his  life.  He  meets  various  vicissitudes  in  various 
ways  ;  he  has  adventures.  The  actions  he  per- 
forms are  so  complex  and  so  numerous  that  they 
are  severally  performed  with  less  frequency  than 
the  few  actions  performed  by  the  codfish.  The 
requisite  nervous  connections  are  accordingly  not 
fully  established  before  birth.  There  is  not  time 
enough.  The  nervous  connections  needed  for 
the  visceral  movements  and  for  the  few  simple 
instinctive  actions  get  organized,  and  then  the 
creature  is  born  before  he  has  learned  how  to 
do  all  the  things  his  parents  could  do.  A  good 
many  of  his  nervous  connections  are  not  yet 
formed,  they  are  only  formable.  Accordingly 
he  is  not  quite  able  to  take  care  of  himself;  he 
must  for  a  time  be  watched  and  nursed.  All 
mammals  and  most  birds  have  thus  a  period  of 
babyhood  that  is  not  very  long,  but  is  on  the 
whole  longest  with  the  most  intelligent  creatures. 
It  is  especially  long  with  the  higher  monkeys, 
and  among  the  man-like  apes  it  becomes  so  long 
as  to  be  strikingly  suggestive.  An  infant  orang- 
outang, captured  by  Mr.  Wallace,  was  still  a 
helpless  baby  at  the  age  of  three  months,  unable 
to  feed  itself,  to  walk  without  aid,  or  to  grasp 
objects  with  precision. 

But   this   period  of  helplessness  has  to  be 
viewed  under  another  aspect.    It  is  a  period  of 

285 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

plasticity.  The  creature's  career  is  no  longer  ex- 
clusively  determined  by  heredity.  There  is  a 
period  after  birth  when  its  character  can  be 
slightly  modified  by  what  happens  to  it  after 
birth,  that  is,  by  its  experience  as  an  individual. 
It  becomes  educable.  It  is  no  longer  necessary 
for  each  generation  to  be  exactly  like  that  which 
has  preceded.  A  door  is  opened  through  which 
the  capacity  for  progress  can  enter.  Horses  and 
dogs,  bears  and  elephants,  parrots  and  monkeys, 
are  all  teachable  to  some  extent,  and  we  have 
even  heard  of  a  learned  pig.  Of  learned  asses 
there  has  been  no  lack  in  the  world. 

But  this  educability  of  the  higher  mammals 
and  birds  is  after  all  quite  limited.  By  the  be- 
ginnings of  infancy  the  door  for  progressiveness 
was  set  ajar,  but  it  was  not  all  at  once  thrown 
wide  open.  Conservatism  still  continued  in  fash- 
ion. One  generation  of  cattle  is  much  like  an- 
other. It  would  be  easy  for  foxes  to  learn  to 
climb  trees,  and  many  a  fox  might  have  saved 
his  life  by  doing  so  ;  yet  quick-witted  as  he  is, 
this  obvious  device  never  seems  to  have  occurred 
to  Reynard.  Among  slightly  teachable  mam- 
mals, however,  there  is  one  group  more  teach- 
able than  the  rest.  Monkeys,  with  their  greater 
power  of  handling  things,  have  also  more  in- 
quisitiveness  and  more  capacity  for  sustained  at- 
tention than  any  other  mammals  ;  and  the  higher 
apes  are  fertile  in  varied  resources.  The  orang- 
286 


THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY 

outang  and  gorilla  are  for  this  reason  dreaded 
by  other  animals,  and  roam  the  undisputed  lords 
of  their  native  forests.  They  have  probably  ap- 
proached the  critical  point  where  variations  in 
intelligence,  always  important,  have  come  to  be 
supremely  important,  so  as  to  be  seized  by  natu- 
ral selection  in  preference  to  variations  in  phys- 
ical constitution.  At  some  remote  epoch  of  the 
past  —  we  cannot  say  just  when  or  how  —  our 
half-human  forefathers  reached  and  passed  this 
critical  point,  and  forthwith  their  varied  strug- 
gles began  age  after  age  to  result  in  the  preser- 
vation of  bigger  and  better  brains,  while  the  rest 
of  their  bodies  changed  but  little.  This  partic- 
ular work  of  natural  selection  must  have  gone 
on  for  an  enormous  length  of  time,  and  as  its 
result  we  see  that  while  man  remains  anatomi- 
cally much  like  an  ape,  he  has  acquired  a  vastly 
greater  brain  with  all  that  this  implies.  Zoolo- 
gically the  distance  is  small  between  man  and 
the  chimpanzee  ;  psychologically  it  has  become 
so  great  as  to  be  immeasurable. 

But  this  steady  increase  of  intelligence,  as  our 
forefathers  began  to  become  human,  carried  with 
it  a  steady  prolongation  of  infancy.  As  mental 
life  became  more  complex  and  various,  as  the 
things  to  be  learned  kept  ever  multiplying,  less 
and  less  could  be  done  before  birth,  more  and 
more  must  be  left  to  be  done  in  the  earlier  years 
of  life.  So  instead  of  being  born  with  a  few  sim- 
287 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

pie  capacities  thoroughly  organized,  man  came 
at  last  to  be  born  with  the  germs  of  many  com- 
plex capacities  which  were  reserved  to  be  un- 
folded and  enhanced  or  checked  and  stifled  by 
the  incidents  of  personal  experience  in  each  in- 
dividual. In  this  simple  yet  wonderful  way  there 
has  been  provided  for  man  a  long  period  during 
which  his  mind  is  plastic  and  malleable,  and 
the  length  of  this  period  has  increased  with  civ- 
ilization until  it  now  covers  nearly  one  third  of 
our  lives.  It  is  not  that  our  inherited  tendencies 
and  aptitudes  are  not  still  the  main  thing.  It  is 
only  that  we  have  at  last  acquired  great  power 
to  modify  them  by  training,  so  that  progress 
may  go  on  with  ever  increasing  sureness  and 
rapidity. 

In  thus  pointing  out  the  causes  of  infancy, 
we  have  at  the  same  time  witnessed  some  of  its 
effects.  One  effect,  of  stupendous  importance, 
remains  to  be  pointed  out.  As  helpless  baby- 
hood came  more  and  more  to  depend  on  pa- 
rental care,  the  correlated  feelings  were  devel- 
oped on  the  part  of  parents,  and  the  fleeting 
sexual  relations  established  among  mammals  in 
general  were  gradually  exchanged  for  permanent 
relations.  A  cow  feels  strong  maternal  affection 
for  her  nursing  calf,  but  after  the  calf  is  fully 
grown,  though  doubtless  she  distinguishes  it 
from  other  members  of  the  herd,  it  is  not 
clear  that  she  entertains  for  it  any  parental  feel- 
288 


THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY 

ing.  But  with  our  half-human  forefathers  it  is 
not  difficult  to  see  how  infancy  extending  over 
several  years  must  have  tended  gradually  to 
strengthen  the  relations  of  the  children  to  the 
mother,  and  eventually  to  both  parents,  and 
thus  give  rise  to  the  permanent  organization  of 
the  family.  When  this  step  was  accomplished 
we  may  say  that  the  Creation  of  Man  had  been 
achieved.  For  through  the  organization  of  the 
family  has  arisen  that  of  the  clan  or  tribe,  which 
has  formed,  as  it  were,  the  cellular  tissue  out 
of  which  the  most  complex  human  society  has 
come  to  be  constructed.  And  out  of  that  sub- 
ordination of  individual  desires  to  the  common 
interest,  which  first  received  a  definite  direction 
when  the  family  was  formed,  there  grew  the 
rude  beginnings  of  human  morality. 

It  was  thus  through  the  lengthening  of  his 
infancy  that  the  highest  of  animals  came  to  be 
Man,  —  a  creature  with  definite  social  relation- 
ships and  with  an  element  of  plasticity  in  his 
organization  such  as  has  come  at  last  to  make 
his  difference  from  all  other  animals  a  difference 
in  kind.  Here  at  last  there  had  come  upon  the 
scene  a  creature  endowed  with  the  capacity  for 
progress,  and  a  new  chapter  was  thus  opened  in 
the  history  of  creation.  But  it  was  not  to  be  ex- 
pected that  man  should  all  at  once  learn  how 
to  take  advantage  of  this  capacity.  Nature, 
which  is  said  to  make  no  jumps,  surely  did  not 
289 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

jump  here.  The  whole  history  of  civilization, 
indeed,  is  largely  the  history  of  man's  awkward 
and  stumbling  efforts  to  avail  himself  of  this 
flexibility  of  mental  constitution  with  which  God 
has  endowed  him.  For  many  a  weary  age  the 
progress  men  achieved  was  feeble  and  halting. 
Though  it  had  ceased  to  be  physically  necessary 
for  each  generation  to  tread  exactly  in  the  steps 
of  its  predecessor,  yet  the  circumstances  of  prim- 
itive society  long  made  it  very  difficult  for  any 
deviation  to  be  effected.  For  the  tribes  of  prim- 
itive men  were  perpetually  at  war  with  each 
other,  and  their  methods  of  tribal  discipline  were 
military  methods.  To  allow  much  freedom  of 
thought  would  be  perilous,  and  the  whole  tribe 
was  supposed  to  be  responsible  for  the  word? 
and  deeds  of  each  of  its  members.  The  tribes 
most  rigorous  in  this  stern  discipline  were  those 
which  killed  out  tribes  more  loosely  organized, 
and  thus  survived  to  hand  down  to  coming  gen- 
erations their  ideas  and  their  methods.  From 
this  state  of  things  an  intense  social  conservatism 
was  begotten,  —  a  strong  disposition  on  the 
part  of  society  to  destroy  the  flexible-minded 
individual  who  dares  to  think  and  behave  differ- 
ently from  his  fellows.  During  the  past  three 
thousand  years  much  has  been  done  to  weaken 
this  conservatism  by  putting  an  end  to  the  state 
of  things  which  produced  it.  As  great  and 
strong  societies  have  arisen,  as  the  sphere  of 
290 


THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY 

warfare  has  diminished  while  the  sphere  of  in- 
dustry has  enlarged,  the  need  for  absolute  con- 
formity has  ceased  to  be  felt,  while  the  advan- 
tages of  freedom  and  variety  come  to  be  ever 
more  clearly  apparent.  At  a  late  stage  of  civi- 
lization, the  flexible  or  plastic  society  acquires 
even  a  military  advantage  over  the  society  that 
is  more  rigid,  as  in  the  struggle  between  French 
and  English  civilization  for  primacy  in  the 
world.  In  our  own  country,  the  political  birth 
of  which  dates  from  the  triumph  of  England  in 
that  mighty  struggle,  the  element  of  plasticity 
in  man's  nature  is  more  thoroughly  heeded, 
more  fully  taken  account  of,  than  in  any  other 
community  known  to  history  ;  and  herein  lies 
the  chief  potency  of  our  promise  for  the  future. 
We  have  come  to  the  point  where  we  are  be- 
ginning to  see  that  we  may  safely  depart  from 
unreasoning  routine,  and,  with  perfect  freedom 
of  thinking  in  science  and  in  religion,  with  new 
methods  of  education  that  shall  train  our  chil- 
dren to  think  for  themselves  while  they  interro- 
gate Nature  with  a  courage  and  an  insight  that 
shall  grow  ever  bolder  and  keener,  we  may  ere- 
long be  able  fully  to  avail  ourselves  of  the  fact 
that  we  come  into  the  world  as  little  children  with 
undeveloped  powers  wherein  lie  latent  all  the 
boundless  possibilities  of  a  higher  and  grander 
Humanity  than  has  yet  been  seen  upon  the  earth, 

October,  1883. 

291 


XIII 

A  UNIVERSE   OF   MIND-STUFF 

THE  author  of  these  two  remarkable 
volumes l  died  last  March  in  the  island 
of  Madeira,  at  the  early  age  of  thirty- 
three,  the  victim,  apparently,  of  what  is  called 
"overwork,"  —  that  is,  of  work  long  pursued 
in  utter  disregard  of  the  necessary  limitations 
and  imperative  requirements  of  the  human  sys- 
tem. Never,  perhaps,  has  the  demon  of  over- 
work carried  off  a  more  illustrious  victim. 
Never,  perhaps,  has  it  been  more  strikingly 
shown  of  how  little  avail  is  the  mere  knowledge 
of  hygiene  in  insuring  obedience  to  its  precepts. 
No  one  understood  better  than  Clifford  what 
are  popularly  known  as  the  laws  of  health ;  no 
one  had  fathomed  more  deeply  or  discussed 
more  lucidly  the  dependence  of  the  mind  upon 
the  body ;  no  one  in  our  time  has  been  better 
able  to  apply  in  the  physiological  domain  the 
most  accurate  and  definite  conceptions  of  the 
relations  of  energy  to  work.  Yet  from  all  I 

1  Lectures  and  Essays.    By  the  late  William  Kingdom  Clif- 
ford, F.  R.  S.    Edited  by  Leslie  Stephen  and  Frederick  Pol- 
lock.   2  vols.  8vo.    London:   Macmillan  &  Co.     1879. 
292 


A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF 

have  been  able  to  learn  regarding  Clifford's  in- 
tellectual life,  it  would  seem  to  have  been  at  all 
times  carried  on  with  an  intensely  passionate, 
irrepressible  zeal,  as  regardless  of  all  physical 
laws  as  if  the  mind  were  not  merely  a  distinct 
but  an  independent  entity,  unhampered  even 
during  the  present  life  by  physical  conditions. 

I  cite  this  singular  discrepancy  between  know- 
ledge and  practice  on  account  of  its  intrinsic 
interest,  not  in  reproof  of  the  course  of  a  friend 
whose  loss  I  must  ever  mourn.  Admitting,  with 
Mr.  Spencer,  that  one  is  morally  bound  so  to 
treat  the  body  as  not  "  in  any  way  to  diminish 
the  fulness  or  vigour  of  its  vitality,"  one  sees 
at  the  same  time  that,  as  the  world  is  now  con- 
stituted, emergencies  often  arise  which  subordi- 
nate to  higher  duties  the  duty  of  keeping  one- 
self well.  To  save  human  life  I  may  jump  into 
a  freezing  river,  though  an  ice-water  bath  be  not 
recommended  by  hygienic  advisers.  So  one 
sympathizes  with  the  heroic  sense  of  duty  which 
often  leads  the  scholar  to  toil  early  and  late,  and 
long  after  weariness  has  set  in,  in  the  perform- 
ance of  work  which  is  expected  of  him,  —  though 
in  many  cases  the  work  itself  may  be  obscure 
in  fame  and  the  taskmaster  thankless  and  treach- 
erous. For  my  own  part  I  sympathize  keenly, 
too,  with  a  very  different  feeling,  —  with  that 
glorious  exuberance  of  vital  energy  which  in 
youthful  days  leads  one  far  on  into  the  night, 
293 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

working  with  a  kind  of  sacred  fury  to  seize  and 
secure  the  sudden  glimpses  of  the  fairyland  of 
scientific  truth  or  literary  beauty  ere  drowsy 
memory  shall  let  them  slip  and  fade  away.  I 
think  it  very  likely  that  in  many  such  cases  a 
systematic  self-repression,  in  deference  to  hygi- 
enic considerations,  might  be  just  enough  to  clip 
down  the  brilliant  discoverer  or  original  thinker 
into  a  mere  scientific  or  literary  prig.  The  secrets 
of  Nature  and  of  Art  are  not  to  be  won  with- 
out struggles  ;  and  in  the  serene  regions  of  phil- 
osophic meditation,  no  less  than  in  the  turmoil 
of  practical  life,  the  highest  results  are  often 
accomplished  by  those  who  work  with  desperate 
energy  quite  regardless  of  self.  Generous  feel- 
ings of  this  sort  have  no  doubt  frequently  urged 
great  thinkers,  like  Clifford,  fatally  to  overtask 
their  physical  resources ;  and  such  mistakes  are 
peculiarly  facilitated  by  the  accommodating  dis- 
position of  that  faithful  servant  the  brain,  which 
in  men  of  highly  strung  nervous  temperament 
is  but  too  ready  to  keep  at  its  work  without 
protest,  as  a  thoroughbred  horse  will  run  till  it 
drops. 

In  Clifford's  case  this  prodigious  enthusiasm 
for  work,  joined  with  an  inherited  weakness  of 
constitution,  has  robbed  the  world  of  one  of  its 
most  valuable  lives.  But  though  his  life  was 
brief,  it  was  wonderfully  rich  in  achievement  no 
less  than  in  promise.  He  had  discerned  more, 
294 


A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF 

and  discerned  it  more  clearly,  in  his  score  and 
a  half  of  years  than  most  men  discern  in  four- 
score. In  pure  mathematics  he  was  admitted, 
at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  to  be  one  of  the  first 
five  or  six  original  thinkers  of  Europe.  I  say 
this  from  hearsay,  for  my  own  knowledge  of  the 
subject  is  not  sufficient  to  enable  me  to  compre- 
hend his  mathematical  achievements  or  to  appre- 
ciate their  bearing.  But  the  power  and  acuteness 
with  which  he  treated  questions  in  physics  and 
in  general  philosophy  were  very  marvellous, 
and  his  suggestiveness  was  so  great  as  already 
to  have  entitled  him  to  a  high  rank  among  con- 
temporary philosophers.  It  was  impossible  for 
him  to  touch  upon  any  subject  without  throw- 
ing some  new  light  upon  it,  for  the  mere  re- 
statement of  an  old  truth  in  his  powerful  and 
luminous  language  was  sure  to  invest  it  with 
fresh  and  beautiful  significance.  His  skill  in  sci- 
entific exposition  was,  accordingly,  very  remark- 
able. For  taking  the  most  hopelessly  compli- 
cated and  abstruse  subjects  and  making  them 
seem  perfectly  simple  and  almost  self-evident  to 
ordinary  minds,  I  do  not  know  who  could  be 
found  to  compare  with  him.  This  rare  power 
he  owed  largely  to  the  extreme  vividness  of  his 
imagination.  What  he  saw  "with  his  mind's 
eye,"  he  saw  as  accurately  and  distinctly  as  only 
keen  observers  see  things  when  they  look  with 
the  physical  eye.  This  is  well  illustrated  in  his 
295 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

lecture  on  "  Atoms,"  and  in  various  passages 
where  he  has  occasion  to  allude  to  the  intimate 
constitution  of  matter,  to  solidity,  liquidity, 
quantivalence,  and  so  on.  People  generally, 
when  they  talk  about  atoms,  think  only  of  very 
little  particles,  without  having  in  mind  anything 
about  their  various  shapes  and  modes  of  be- 
haviour. Even  scientific  men,  who  get  on  well 
enough  by  the  aid  of  established  formulas,  now 
and  then  betray  a  similar  barrenness  of  concep- 
tion when  some  novel  point  comes  up  for  dis- 
cussion. But  Clifford  would  describe  a  cluster 
of  atoms  with  as  much  minuteness  and  as  much 
animation  as  a  fashionable  lady  would  display 
in  describing  the  gorgeous  costumes  of  last 
night's  ball.  Take  the  air  of  this  room,  for  ex- 
ample, which  does  not  fill  up  all  the  space  in  the 
room,  but  is  composed  of  a  prodigious  number 
of  discrete  particles  of  two  sorts,  —  one  sort 
called  molecules  of  oxygen,  the  other  sort  called 
molecules  of  nitrogen.  "  These  small  mole- 
cules," says  Clifford,  "  are  not  at  rest  in  the 
room,  but  are  flying  about  in  all  directions  with 
a  mean  velocity  of  seventeen  miles  a  minute. 
They  do  not  fly  far  in  one  direction  ;  but  any 
particular  molecule,  after  going  over  an  incredi- 
bly short  distance — the  measure  of  which  has 
been  made  —  meets  another,  not  exactly  plump, 
but  a  little  on  one  side ;  so  that  they  behave  to 
one  another  somewhat  in  the  same  way  as  two 
296 


A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF 

people  do  who  are  dancing  Sir  Roger  de  Cover- 
ley,  —  they  join  hands,  swing  around,  and  then 
fly  away  in  different  directions.  All  these  mole- 
cules are  constantly  changing  the  direction  of 
each  other's  motion  ;  they  are  flying  about  with 
very  different  velocities,  although,  as  I  have 
said,  their  mean  velocity  is  about  seventeen 
miles  a  minute.  If  the  velocities  were  all  marked 
off  on  a  scale,  they  would  be  found  distributed 
about  the  mean  velocity  just  as  shots  are  dis- 
tributed about  a  mark.  If  a  great  many  shots 
are  fired  at  a  target,  the  hits  will  be  found  thick- 
est at  the  bull's-eye,  and  they  will  gradually 
diminish  as  we  go  away  from  that,  according  to 
a  certain  law  which  is  called  the  law  of  error.  It 
was  first  stated  clearly  by  Laplace  ;  and  it  is 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  consequences  of 
theory  that  the  molecules  of  a  gas  have  their 
velocities  distributed  among  them  precisely  ac- 
cording to  this  law  of  error.  In  the  case  of  a 
liquid,  it  is  believed  that  the  state  of  things  is 
quite  different.  We  said  that  in  the  gas  the 
molecules  are  moved  in  straight  lines,  and  that 
it  is  only  during  a  small  portion  of  their  motion 
that  they  are  deflected  by  other  molecules  ;  but 
in  a  liquid  we  may  say  that  the  molecules  go 
about  as  if  they  were  dancing  the  grand  chain 
in  the  Lancers.  Every  molecule  after  parting 
company  with  one  finds  another,  and  so  is  con- 
stantly going  about  in  a  curved  path,  and  never 
297 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

sent  quite  clear  away  from  the  sphere  of  action 
of  the  surrounding  molecules.  But,  notwith- 
standing that,  all  molecules  in  a  liquid  are  con- 
stantly changing  their  places,  and  it  is  for  that 
reason  that  diffusion  takes  place  in  the  liquid. 
...  In  the  case  of  a  solid,  quite  a  different 
thing  takes  place.  In  a  solid  every  molecule  has 
a  place  which  it  keeps ;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  not 
at  rest  any  more  than  a  molecule  of  a  liquid  or 
a  gas,  but  it  has  a  certain  mean  position  which 
it  is  always  vibrating  about  and  keeping  fairly 
near  to,  and  it  is  kept  from  losing  that  position 
by  the  action  of  the  surrounding  molecules." l 

Such  scientific  exposition  as  this  is  as  beauti- 
ful as  poetry.  In  reading  it  one  feels  how  the 
glory  and  beauty  of  Nature  are  immeasurably 
enhanced  for  the  philosopher  who  can  thus  with 
inward  vision  distinctly  grasp  objects  and  rela- 
tions too  subtile  for  the  eye  of  sense  in  any  wise 
to  discern. 

This  same  remarkable  lucidity  is  exhibited 
by  Clifford  in  the  treatment  of  metaphysical 
problems.  In  some  respects  the  most  striking 
discussion  in  the  present  volume  is  contained 
in  the  essay  on  "  The  Nature  of  Things-in- 
themselves,"  where  some  of  the  latest  sugges- 
tions of  anti-materialistic  philosophy  are  very 
forcibly  presented.  Starting  from  the  impreg- 
nable Berkeleian  position  that  the  material 
1  Vol.  i.  p.  194. 
298 


A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF 

world  of  which  I  am  conscious  exists  only  as  an 
organized  series  of  changes  in  my  consciousness, 
Clifford  introduces  a  very  interesting  and  sug- 
gestive distinction  between  the  objective  and 
the  ejective  elements  in  cognition.  Our  infer- 
ences concerning  the  material  world  are  all  in- 
ferences concerning  either  some  actual  or  some 
potential  states  of  consciousness.  When  I  de- 
scribe the  moon  at  which  I  am  looking,  I  am 
describing  merely  a  plexus  of  optical  sensations 
with  sundry  revived  states  of  mind  linked  by 
various  laws  of  association  with  the  optical  sen- 
sations. When  I  say  that  the  moon  existed  be- 
fore I  was  born,  I  only  mean  that  if  I  had  been 
alive  a  century  ago  and  stood  here  and  looked 
up  as  I  am  now  doing,  I  should  have  had  a 
similar  plexus  of  optical  sensations  and  revived 
states  of  mind  to  describe.  Obviously  there  is 
nothing  else  which  I  can  mean ;  in  any  state- 
ment which  I  may  make  concerning  the  world 
of  matter,  I  can  refer  only  to  things  which  either 
are,  or  may  be,  or  might  have  been,  objects  ii? 
my  consciousness.  But  it  is  quite  otherwise 
when  I  make  statements  regarding  the  existence 
of  minds  other  than  my  own.  "  When  I  come 
to  the  conclusion,"  says  Clifford,  "  that  you  are 
conscious,  and  that  there  are  objects  in  your 
consciousness  similar  to  those  in  mine,  I  am 
not  inferring  any  actual  or  possible  feelings  of 
my  own,  but  your  feelings,  which  are  not,  and 
299 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

cannot  by  any  possibility  become,  objects  in  my 
consciousness."  In  the  very  act  of  inferring  that 
you  have  feelings  like  mine,  some  of  which  you 
class  as  objective,  and  call  the  outer  worldj 
while  others  you  class  as  subjective,  —  in  the 
very  act  of  inferring  this  I  recognize  these  in- 
ferred feelings  of  yours  as  something  outside 
of  myself,  as  something  which  is  not  a  part  of 
myself  and  never  could  be.  These  inferred  ex- 
istences Clifford  calls  ejects,  "  things  thrown  out 
of  my  consciousness,  to  distinguish  them  from 
objects ,  things  presented  in  my  consciousness, — 
phenomena."  My  conception  of  you  is  "  a  rough 
picture  of  the  whole  aggregate  of  my  conscious- 
ness, under  imagined  circumstances  like  yours ; " 
and  this  conception  —  unlike  my  conception  of 
the  moon,  or  of  your  face  —  implies  the  exist- 
ence of  something  that  can  never  in  any  way 
become  a  part  of  my  consciousness.  Your  face, 
while  I  am  looking  at  you,  is  an  object  in  my 
consciousness;  but  your  consciousness  can 
never  be  an  object  in  mine,  —  it  is  an  eject, 
something  entirely  outside  of  my  consciousness. 
And  so,  too,  your  thoughts  and  feelings,  the 
objects  in  your  mind,  are  to  me  ejects. 

Now  my  belief  in  the  existence  of  ejects  af- 
fects essentially  my  conception  of  objects.  As 
a  simple  object,  the  table  is  but  a  group  of  my 
states  of  consciousness ;  but  when  I  speak  to 
you  of  the  table,  I  infer  the  existence  in  you  of 
300 


A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF 

a  similar  group  of  states  of  consciousness,-— 
and  this  group  is  an  eject.  When  I  think  or 
speak  of  the  table,  I  bind  up  together  the  indi- 
vidual object  as  it  exists  in  my  mind  with  an  in- 
definite number  of  ejects  assumed  to  resemble 
it ;  and  thus  is  formed  the  complex  conception 
which  Clifford  calls  the  social  object,  —  that  is, 
the  conception  of  the  table  as  an  object  in  hu- 
man consciousness  in  general.  There  now  en- 
sues an  ingenious  and  interesting  series  of  infer- 
ences. Before  our  ancestors  had  become  men, 
or  were  endowed  with  anything  like  a  human 
consciousness,  there  is  every  reason  for  suppos- 
ing them  to  have  been  gregarious  in  their  habits. 
They  were  gregarious  primates  of  high  sagacity. 
But  gregarious  action,  among  animals  endowed 
with  any  sort  of  consciousness,  is  plainly  im- 
possible unless  the  individual  animal  recognizes 
his  fellow's  consciousness  as  similar  to  or  kin- 
dred with  his  own.  Above  all,  the  first  begin- 
nings of  speech  necessarily  involved  a  belief  in 
the  eject.  But  now,  says  Clifford,  "if  not  only 
this  conception  of  the  particular  social  object, 
but  all  those  that  have  been  built  up  out  of  it, 
have  been  formed  at  the  same  time  with,  and 
under  the  influence  of  language,  it  seems  to 
follow  that  the  belief  in  the  existence  of  other 
men's  minds  like  our  own,  but  not  part  of  usv 
must  be  inseparably  associated  with  every  pro- 
cess whereby  discrete  impressions  are  built  to* 
301 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

gether  into  an  object."  To  vary  the  quaint  ex- 
pression of  Ferrier,  the  minimum  scibile  per  se  is 
not  exactly  ego  plus  object,  but  it  is  ego  plus  eject. 
Along  with  what  we  call  the  objective  element 
in  every  piece  of  our  knowledge  there  is  not 
only  a  reference  to  self,  but  there  is  also  a  sub- 
conscious reference  to  other  selves  outside  of 
us.  "  And  this  sub-conscious  reference  to  sup- 
posed ejects,"  continues  Clifford,  "  is  what  con- 
stitutes the  impression  of  externality  in  the  object, 
whereby  it  is  described  as  not-me.  At  any  rate, 
the  formation  of  the  social  object  supplies  an 
account  of  this  impression  of  outness,  without 
requiring  me  to  assume  any  ejects  or  things 
outside  my  consciousness  except  the  minds  of 
other  men.  Consequently  it  cannot  be  argued 
from  the  impression  of  outness  that  there  is 
anything  outside  of  my  consciousness  except 
the  minds  of  other  men." 

By  this  beautiful  method  of  presentation,  so 
much  fresh  light  is  thrown  upon  some  philosoph- 
ical truths  as  to  make  them  appear  self-evident. 
See  what  havoc  it  makes,  at  the  outset,  with  the 
crude  notion  of  the  materialists  —  a  notion  sup- 
ported by  loose  popular  language  and  loose  pop- 
ular thinking  —  that  changes  of  consciousness 
are  caused  by  physical  actions  on  or  within  the 
organism.  Materialists  talk  about  "ideas  "as 
"  originating  "  in  the  brain  ;  and  people  gener- 
ally have  become  so  far  impressed  with  the  no- 
302 


A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF 

tion  that  mental  states  are  caused  by  physical 
actions  on  the  nervous  system,  that  when  you 
begin  to  explain  to  them  the  wonderfully  mi- 
nute correlations  between  physical  action  and 
brain-action  which  modern  psychology  is  dis- 
closing, they  immediately  take  fright  and  think 
you  are  "  explaining  away  "  the  mind  altogether. 
They  think  that  in  order  to  refute  materialism 
it  is  necessary  to  deny  that  associations  of  ideas 
occur  simultaneously  with  the  passage  of  waves 
of  molecular  motion  from  one  cell  to  another  in 
the  gray  surface  of  the  brain.  I  wonder  it  never 
occurs  to  them  that  they  might  more  summa- 
rily effect  their  purpose  by  denying,  once  for  all, 
that  the  brain  has  anything  whatever  to  do  with 
mind,  or  has  any  further  function  than  that  of  a 
balance  wheel  or  "  governor  "  for  regulating  the 
motions  of  the  viscera !  But  in  point  of  fact 
their  alarm  is  altogether  groundless.  Those  who 
have  mastered  the  doctrine  of  the  conservation 
of  energy  in  its  bearings  upon  the  facts  of  psy- 
chology will  see,  as  I  demonstrated  some  years 
ago  in  "  Cosmic  Philosophy,"  that  it  is  utterly 
impossible  that  actions  in  the  nervous  system 
should  ever,  under  any  circumstances,  stand  in 
the  relation  of  cause  to  psychical  actions  going 
on  in  the  mind.  A  wave  of  molecular  motion 
in  the  brain  cannot  produce  a  feeling  or  a  state 
of  consciousness.  It  can  do  nothing  whatever 
but  set  up  other  waves  of  molecular  motion, 
303 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

either  in  the  gray  matter  of  ganglia  or  in  the 
white  matter  of  nerve-fibres.  Whatever  goes  in 
any  way  into  the  organism  as  physical  force  must 
come  out  again  as  physical  force,  and  every  phase 
of  every  transformation  that  it  may  undergo  in 
the  mean  time  must  be  rigorously  accounted  for 
in  terms  of  physical  force,  or  else  the  law  of  the 
conservation  of  energy  will  not  be  satisfied.  To 
introduce  consciousness  or  feeling  anywhere  in 
the  series,  as  either  caused  by  or  causing  actions 
in  the  brain  or  nerves,  is  "  not  to  state  what  is 
untrue,  but  is  to  talk  nonsense,"  as  Clifford 
would  say.  These  considerations  —  which  must 
forever  shut  out  sciolists  like  Biichner  from  in- 
truding with  their  self-satisfied  explanations  into 
the  great  primordial  mystery  of  Nature,  the  re- 
lationship of  body  and  soul  —  would  seem  to 
have  been  clearly  appreciated  by  Clifford ;  and 
he  states  the  point  in  his  psychological  language 
with  elegant  succinctness.  "The  word  Cause, 
TroXXa^o)?  \cy6jjLevov  and  misleading  as  it  is, 
having  no  legitimate  place  in  science  or  phi- 
losophy [Chauncey  Wright  would  have  said  a 
hearty  Amen  to  that !  ] ,  may  yet  be  of  some  use  in 
conversation  or  literature,  if  it  is  kept  to  denote 
a  relation  between  objective  facts,  to  describe  cer- 
tain parts  of  the  phenomenal  order.  But  only 
confusion  can  arise,  if  it  is  used  to  express  the 
relation  between  certain  objective  facts  in  my 
consciousness  and  the  ejective  facts  which  are 
3°4 


A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF 

inferred  as  corresponding  in  some  way  to  them 
and  running  parallel  with  them.  .  .  .  The  dis- 
tinction between  eject  and  object,  properly 
grasped,  forbids  us  to  regard  the  eject,  another 
man's  mind,  as  coming  into  the  world  of  objects 
in  any  way,  or  as  standing  in  the  relation  of 
cause  or  effect  to  any  changes  in  that  world.  I 
need  hardly  add  that  the  facts  do  very  strongly 
lead  us  to  regard  our  bodies  as  merely  compli- 
cated examples  of  practically  universal  physical 
rules,  and  their  motions  as  determined  in  the 
same  way  as  those  of  the  sun  and  the  sea.  There 
is  no  evidence  which  amounts  to  a  prima  facie 
case  against  the  dynamical  uniformity  of  Na- 
ture ;  and  I  make  no  exception  in  favour  of  that 
slykick  force  which  fills  existing  lunatic  asylums 
and  makes  private  houses  into  new  ones." 

The  doctrine  of  evolution,  as  applied  by  Mr. 
Spencer  to  the  study  of  psychical  phenomena, 
nowhere  undertakes  to  interpret  Mind  as 
evolved  from  Matter,  but  it  shows  a  wonder- 
fully minute  and  instructive  parallelism  between 
the  modes  of  evolution  of  the  total  series  of  ob- 
jective facts  and  the  total  series  of  ejective  facts. 
Pushing  the  analysis,  both  of  physical  and  of  psy- 
chical phenomena,  to  its  farthest  possible  limits 
with  the  data  now  at  command,  Mr.  Spencer 
has  shown  how  all  the  phenomena  constituting 
a  consciousness  are  compounded  of  elementary 
sub-conscious  feelings  or  "psychical  shocks." 

305 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Physical  phenomena,  likewise,  in  an  ultimate 
analysis,  are  resolved  into  simple  pulsations  or 
rhythmical  movements  of  ether-atoms ;  and  the 
question  arises  as  to  the  relation  between  the 
elementary  physical  pulsation  and  the  elemen- 
tary psychical  shock.  Reasoning  most  ingen- 
iously from  the  essential  continuity  in  Nature 
which  the  doctrine  of  evolution  supposes,  and 
recognizing  the  impossibility  of  deriving  the 
psychical  element  from  the  physical,  Clifford 
reaches  the  conclusion  that  "  every  motion  of 
matter  is  simultaneous  with  some  ejective  fact 
or  event  which  might  be  part  of  a  consciousness." 
This  simple  ejective  fact  or  event  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  molecule,  so  to  speak,  of  mind-stuff; 
and  we  reach  the  startling  conclusion  that  "  the 
universe  consists  entirely  of  mind-stuff.  Some 
of  this  is  woven  into  the  complex  form  of  hu- 
man minds  containing  imperfect  representations 
of  the  mind-stuff  outside  them,  and  of  them- 
selves also,  as  a  mirror  reflects  its  own  image  in 
another  mirror  ad  infinitum.  Such  an  imperfect 
representation  is  called  a  material  universe.  It 
is  a  picture  in  a  man's  mind  of  the  real  universe 
of  mind-stuff." 

Clifford  recognizes  that  this  doctrine  seems  to 
have  been  independently  arrived  at  by  many  per- 
sons, and  he  instances  the  statements  of  Wundt 
in  his  "  Physiologische  Psychologic."  The  the- 
ory harmonizes  well  with  that  which  I  have  en- 
306 


A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF 

deavoured  to  elucidate  in  the  chapter  on  Matter 
and  Spirit  in  my  "  Cosmic  Philosophy,"  though 
the  result  was  reached  by  different  processes 
of  inference  in  the  two  cases.  With  Clifford's 
further  conclusion,  that  the  complex  web  of  hu- 
man consciousness  cannot  survive  the  disintegra- 
tion of  the  organic  structure  with  which  we  in- 
variably find  it  associated,  I  do  not  agree.  It  is 
a  conclusion  not  involved  in  the  premises,  and  is 
one  which  no  scientific  philosopher,  as  such,  has 
a  right  to  draw.  It  necessitates  as  complete  a 
transgression  of  the  bounds  of  experience  as  any 
theologian  is  ever  called  upon  to  make.  Least  of 
all  would  one  expect  to  see  Clifford  drawing  such 
a  conclusion  and  announcing  it  with  a  tinge  of 
dogmatic  emphasis  withal,  after  reading  his 
admirable  remarks  on  Lobatchevski,  where  he 
shows  how  strictly  the  modern  thinker  must 
limit  his  generalizations  to  the  region  covered 
by  experience.  Were  it  not  for  a  trifle  too  much 
of  what  Mr.  Spencer  would  call  the  "  anti-theo- 
logical bias,"  Clifford's  way  of  reasoning  about 
the  universe  would  have  left  little  to  be  desired. 

November,  1879. 


307 


XIV 
IN  MEMORIAM:  CHARLES  DARWIN 

TO-DAY,  while  all  that  was  mortal  of 
Charles  Darwin  is  borne  to  its  last 
resting-place  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
by  the  side  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  it  seems  a  fit- 
ting occasion  to  utter  a  few  words  of  tribute  to 
the  memory  of  the  beautiful  and  glorious  life 
that  has  just  passed  away  from  us.  Though 
Mr.  Darwin  had  more  than  completed  his 
threescore  and  ten  years,  and  though  his  life 
had  been  rich  in  achievement  and  crowned 
with  success  such  as  is  but  seldom  vouchsafed 
to  man,  yet  the  news  of  his  death  has  none  the 
less  impressed  us  with  a  sense  of  sudden  and 
premature  bereavement.  For  on  the  one  hand 
the  time  would  never  have  come  when  those  of 
us  who  had  learned  the  inestimable  worth  of 
such  a  teacher  and  friend  could  have  felt  ready 
to  part  with  him ;  and  on  the  other  hand  Mr, 
Darwin  was  one  whom  the  gods,  for  love  of  him, 
had  endowed  with  perpetual  youth,  so  that  his 
death  could  never  seem  otherwise  than  prema- 
ture. As  Mr.  Galton  has  well  said,  the  period 
of  physical  youth  —  say  from  the  fifteenth  to 
308 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

the  twenty-second  year  —  is,  with  most  men, 
the  only  available  period  for  acquiring  the  in- 
tellectual habits  and  amassing  the  stores  of 
knowledge  that  are  to  form  their  equipment  for 
the  work  of  a  life-time ;  but  in  the  case  of  men 
of  the  highest  order  this  period  is  simply  a 
period  of  seven  years,  neither  more  nor  less 
valuable  than  any  other  seven  years.  There  is, 
now  and  then,  a  mind  —  perhaps  one  in  four  or 
five  millions — which  in  early  youth  thinks  the 
thoughts  of  mature  manhood,  and  which  in  old 
age  retains  the  flexibility,  the  receptiveness, 
the  keen  appetite  for  new  impressions,  that  are 
characteristic  of  the  fresh  season  of  youth.  Such 
a  mind  as  this  was  Mr.  Darwin's.  To  the  last 
he  was  eager  for  new  facts  and  suggestions,  to 
the  last  he  held  his  judgments  in  readiness  for 
revision  ;  and  to  this  unfailing  freshness  of  spirit 
was  joined  a  sagacity  which,  naturally  great,  had 
been  refined  and  strengthened  by  half  a  century 
most  fruitful  in  experiences,  till  it  had  come  to 
be  almost  superhuman.  When  we  remember 
how  Alexander  von  Humboldt  began  at  the  age 
of  seventy-five  to  write  his  "  Kosmos,"  and  how 
he  lived  to  turn  off"  in  his  ninetieth  year  the 
fifth  bulky  volume  of  that  prodigiously  learned 
book,  —  when  we  remember  this,  and  consider 
the  great  scientific  value  of  the  monographs 
which  Mr.  Darwin  has  lately  been  publishing 
almost  every  year,  we  must  feel  that  it  is  in  a 
309 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

measure  right  to  speak  of  his  death  as  prema- 
ture. 

After  all,  however,  no  one  can  fail  to  recog- 
nize in  the  career  of  Mr.  Darwin  the  interest 
that  belongs  to  a  complete  and  well-rounded 
tale.  When  the  extent  of  his  work  is  properly 
estimated,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  among 
all  the  great  leaders  of  human  thought  that  have 
ever  lived  there  are  not  half  a  dozen  who  have 
achieved  so  much  as  he.  In  an  age  that  has  been 
richer  than  any  preceding  age  in  great  scientific 
names,  his  name  is  indisputably  the  foremost. 
He  has  already  found  his  place  in  the  history 
of  science  by  the  side  of  Aristotle,  Descartes, 
and  Newton.  And  among  thinkers  of  the  first 
order  of  originality,  he  has  been  peculiarly  for- 
tunate in  having  lived  to  see  all  the  fresh  and 
powerful  minds  of  a  new  generation  adopting 
his  fundamental  conceptions,  and  pursuing  their 
inquiries  along  the  path  which  he  was  the  first 
to  break. 

When  Mr.  Darwin  was  born,  in  1809,  the 
name  which  he  inherited  was  already  a  famous 
name.  Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin,  the  friend  of 
Priestley  and  Watt,  and  author  of  the  "  Botanic 
Garden,"  was  deservedly  ranked  among  the 
most  ingenious  and  original  thinkers  of  the 
eighteenth  century  in  England.  His  brother, 
Robert  Waring  Darwin,  was  the  author  of  a 
work  on  botany  which  for  many  years  enjoyed 
310 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

high  repute.  Of  the  sons  of  Erasmus,  one,  Sir 
Francis  Darwin,  was  noted  as  a  keen  observer 
of  animals  ;  another,  Charles,  who  died  at  the 
age  of  twenty-one  from  a  dissection  wound,  had 
already  written  a  medical  essay  of  such  impor- 
tance as  to  give  his  name  a  place  in  biographi- 
cal dictionaries  ;  a  third,  Robert  Waring,  who 
achieved  great  distinction  as  a  physician,  married 
a  daughter  of  the  celebrated  Josiah  Wedgwood, 
and  became  the  father  of  the  immortal  discoverer 
who  has  just  been  taken  away  from  us.  While 
citing  these  remarkable  instances  of  inherited 
ability,  it  may  be  of  interest  to  mention  also 
that  among  the  cousins  of  Mr.  Darwin  who  have 
become  more  or  less  distinguished  in  our  own 
time  are  Mr.  Hensleigh  Wedgwood,  the  philo- 
logist, the  late  Sir  Henry  Holland,  and  Mr. 
Francis  Galton,  whose  excellent  treatise  on 
"  Hereditary  Genius  "  is  known  to  every  one. 
Nor  can  it  be  irrelevant  to  add  that  one  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  sons  has  already,  through  his  study  of 
the  tides,  achieved  some  remarkable  results, 
which  seem  likely  to  give  him  a  high  place 
among  the  astronomers  of  the  present  day. 

There  is  one  thing  which  a  man  of  original 
scientific  or  philosophical  genius  in  a  rightly  or- 
dered world  should  never  be  called  upon  to  do. 
He  should  never  be  called  upon  to  "  earn  a  liv- 
ing; "  for  that  is  a  wretched  waste  of  energy, 
in  which  the  highest  intellectual  power  is  sure 
3" 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

to  suffer  serious  detriment,  and  runs  the  risk  of 
being  frittered  away  into  hopeless  ruin.  Like 
his  great  predecessor  and  ally,  Sir  Charles  Lyell, 
Mr.  Darwin  was  so  favoured  by  fortune  as  to 
be  free  from  this  odious  necessity.  He  was  able 
to  devote  his  whole  life  with  a  single  mind  to 
the  pursuit  of  scientific  truth,  and  to  ministering 
in  the  most  exalted  way  to  the  welfare  of  his  fel- 
low-creatures. After  taking  his  Master's  degree 
at  Cambridge  in  1831,  at  the  age  of  twenty-two, 
an  opportunity  was  offered  Mr.  Darwin  for 
studying  natural  history  on  a  grand  scale.  The 
Beagle,  a  ten-gun  brig  under  the  command  of 
Captain  Fitzroy,  was  then  about  to  start  on  a 
long  voyage,  "  to  complete  the  survey  of  Pata- 
gonia and  Tierra  del  Fuego,  ...  to  survey  the 
shores  of  Chili,  Peru,  and  of  some  islands  in 
the  Pacific,  and  to  carry  a  chain  of  chronometri- 
cal  measurements  round  the  world."  As  Cap- 
tain Fitzroy  had  expressed  a  wish  to  have  a 
naturalist  accompany  the  expedition,  Mr.  Dar- 
win volunteered  his  services,  which  the  Lords 
of  the  Admiralty  readily  accepted,  —  a  fact  which 
in  itself  is  sufficient  evidence  of  the  reputation 
for  scientific  attainments  which  Mr.  Darwin 
had  already  gained  at  that  youthful  age.  This 
memorable  voyage,  which  lasted  five  years,  was 
very  fruitful  in  results.  The  general  history  of 
the  voyage,  with  an  account  of  such  observations 
in  natural  history  as  seemed  likely  to  interest 
312 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

the  ordinary  reader,  is  to  be  found  in  the  "  Jour- 
nal of  Researches  "  published  by  Mr.  Darwin 
some  three  years  after  his  return  to  England. 
This  book  immediately  acquired  a  great  popu- 
larity, which  it  has  retained  to  this  day,  having 
gone  through  at  least  thirteen  editions ;  and  it 
is  certainly  one  of  the  most  fascinating  books 
of  travel  that  was  ever  written.  "The  author," 
said  the  "  Quarterly  Review,"  in  December, 
1839,  "  is  a  first-rate  landscape  painter  with  the 
pen,  and  the  dreariest  solitudes  are  made  to  teem 
with  interest."  An  abridgment  of  this  charm- 
ing journal,  lately  published  with  illustrations, 
under  the  title  "  What  Mr.  Darwin  saw  in  his 
Voyage  round  the  World,"  has  become  a  favour- 
ite book  for  boys  and  girls. 

The  scientific  results  of  Mr.  Darwin's  voyage 
in  the  Beagle  were  so  voluminous  that  it  re- 
quired several  years  and  the  assistance  of  many 
able  hands  to  record  them  all.  Owen,  Hooker, 
Waterhouse,  Berkeley,  Bell,  and  other  eminent 
naturalists  took  part  in  the  publication  of  these 
results,  which  formed  a  very  important  contri- 
bution to  the  zoology  and  botany,  and  to  the 
palaeontology,  of  the  countries  visited  in  the 
course  of  the  voyage.  To  this  great  series  of 
volumes,  which  appeared  between  1840  and 
1846,  Mr.  Darwin  contributed  three  from  his 
own  hand,  —  the  work  on  "Volcanic  Islands," 
the  "  Geological  Observations  on  South  Amer- 
313 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ica,"  and  the  famous  essay  on  "  Coral  Reefs." 
In  this  latter  work  Mr.  Darwin  proved  that 
through  gradual  submergence  fringing-reefs  are 
developed  into  barrier-reefs,  and  these  again  into 
atolls  or  lagoon-islands ;  and  thus  he  not  only 
for  the  first  time  rendered  comprehensible  the 
work  of  coral-building,  but  threw  a  new  and 
wonderful  light  upon  the  movements  of  eleva- 
tion and  of  subsidence  in  all  parts  of  the  globe. 
By  thus  bringing  the  work  of  the  corals  into 
its  direct  relationship  with  volcanic  phenomena, 
Mr.  Darwin  succeeded  in  presenting  "a  grand 
and  harmonious  picture  of  the  movements  which 
the  crust  of  the  earth  has  undergone  within  a 
late  period  ;  "  and  the  result  was  undoubtedly 
one  of  the  most  brilliant  contributions  to  geology 
that  has  been  made  since  the  first  publication 
of  the  great  work  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell.  In  1851— 
53  Mr.  Darwin  published  a  "  Monograph  of 
the  Cirripedia,"  in  two  volumes  octavo,  and  ac- 
companied this,  about  the  same  time,  with  mon- 
ographs of  the  various  fossil  genera  of  cirripeds 
(or  barnacle  family)  in  Great  Britain.  In  recog- 
nition of  his  solid  and  brilliant  achievements, 
Mr.  Darwin  in  1853  received  the  royal  medal 
from  the  Royal  Society,  and  in  1859  the  Wol- 
laston  medal  from  the  Geological  Society.  By 
this  time  his  name  had  come  to  be  known  in 
all  parts  of  the  civilized  world,  and  he  was  al- 
ready ranked  among  the  foremost  living  natu- 
3H 


IN  MEMORIAM:    CHARLES  DARWIN 

ralists,  so  that  when,  in  the  year  1859,  the  "  Ori- 
gin of  Species  "  was  published,  it  at  once  at- 
tracted universal  attention  by  reason  of  the 
eminence  of  its  author.  I  well  remember  how, 
in  the  first  few  weeks  after  the  book  was  pub- 
lished, every  one  at  all  instructed  in  the  biologi- 
cal sciences  was  eager  to  ascertain  the  views  of 
so  distinguished  a  naturalist  with  regard  to  a 
question  which  for  several  years  had  agitated  the 
scientific  world. 

Like  the  great  works  which  had  preceded  it, 
the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  must  be  regarded  as 
one  of  the  results  of  the  ever  memorable  voyage 
of  the  Beagle.  In  the  course  of  this  voyage 
Mr.  Darwin  visited  the  Galapagos  Islands,  and 
was  struck  by  the  peculiar  relations  which  the 
floras  and  faunas  of  this  archipelago  sustained 
to  one  another,  and  to  the  flora  and  fauna  of  the 
nearest  mainland  of  Ecuador,  distant  some  five 
hundred  miles.  These  islands  are  purely  vol- 
canic in  formation,  and  have  never  at  any  time 
been  joined  to  the  South  American  continent 
They  possess  no  batrachians  and  no  mammals, 
save  a  mouse,  which  was  no  doubt  introduced 
by  some  ship.  The  only  insects  are  coleoptera, 
which  possess  peculiar  facilities  for  transpor- 
tation across  salt  water  upon  floating  logs  or 
branches ;  and  along  with  these  are  two  or 
three  species  of  land  shells.  There  are  also  two 
snakes,  one  land  tortoise,  and  four  kinds  of  liz- 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

ard ;  and  in  striking  contrast  with  all  this  gen- 
eral  extreme  paucity  of  animal  forms,  there  are 
at  least  fifty-five  species  of  birds.  Now  these 
insects,  mollusks,  reptiles,  and  birds  are  like  the 
insects,  mollusks,  reptiles,  and  birds  of  the  west- 
ern coast  of  South  America,  and  not  like  the 
corresponding  animals  in  other  parts  of  the 
world.  But  this  is  not  all ;  for  the  Galapagos 
animals,  while  very  like  the  animals  of  Ecuador, 
Peru,  and  Chili,  are  not  quite  like  them.  While 
the  families  are  identical,  the  differences  are 
always  at  least  specific,  sometimes  generic,  in 
value.  Precisely  the  same  sort  of  relationship 
is  sustained  by  the  Galapagos  flora  toward  the 
flora  of  the  mainland.  And,  to  crown  all,  the 
differences  between  forms  that  are  generic  when 
the  archipelago  as  a  whole  is  compared  with  the 
continent  sink  into  specific  differences  when  the 
several  islands  of  the  archipelago  are  compared 
with  one  another.  Such  a  group  of  facts  as  these 
leads  irresistibly  to  the  conclusion  that  the  speci- 
fic forms  of  plants  and  animals  have  been  origi- 
nated, not  by  "  special  creations,"  but  by  "  de- 
scent with  modifications."  If  species  have  been 
separately  created,  there  is  of  course  no  reason 
why  the  population  of  such  an  archipelago  should 
be  strictly  limited  to  such  organisms  as  can  fly  or 
get  floated  across  the  water ;  nor  is  there  any 
reason  why  these  organisms  should  resemble 
those  of  the  nearest  mainland  rather  than  those 


IN  MEMORIAM :   CHARLES  DARWIN 

of  any  other  tropical  mainland,  such  as  Africa 
or  India.  One  might  indeed  object  that  organ- 
isms have  been  created  in  such  wise  as  most 
completely  to  harmonize  with  the  physical  con- 
ditions by  which  they  are  surrounded,  and  that 
it  is  to  be  presumed  that  the  physical  conditions 
of  the  Galapagos  Islands  are  more  like  those  of 
Ecuador  and  Peru  than  they  are  like  those  of 
any  other  countries ;  so  that  in  this  way  the 
general  similarity  between  the  floras  and  faunas 
may  be  accounted  for.  But  such  an  explanation 
is  very  weak,  for  it  rests  upon  an  assumption 
which  has  been  proved  to  be  untrue.  It  is  not 
always  true  that  the  organisms  in  any  given  part 
of  the  world  are  such  as  harmonize  best  with  the 
physical  conditions  by  which  they  are  sur- 
rounded. It  is  approximately  true  only  where 
the  competition  among  organisms  is  practically 
unlimited  ;  in  protected  areas  it  is  not  at  all  true. 
In  Australia  and  New  Zealand,  for  example, 
the  plants  and  animals  which  have  been  intro- 
duced by  Europeans  are  exterminating  and  sup- 
planting the  native  plants  and  animals  quite  as 
rapidly  as  the  Englishman  is  supplanting  the 
native  human  population  of  these  countries. 
And  to  state  this  fact  is  only  to  say,  in  other 
words,  that  the  plants  and  animals  of  Europe 
are  better  adapted  to  the  physical  conditions 
which  prevail  in  Australia  and  New  Zealand 
than  the  plants  and  animals  which  are  indige- 
3'7 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

nous  there.  A  comprehensive  survey  of  the  dis- 
tribution oflife  all  over  the  globe  confirms  this 
conclusion,  and  shows  that  by  no  assumption 
of  a  special  act  of  creation  can  the  peculiar  fea- 
tures of  the  Galapagos  flora  and  fauna  be  ex- 
plained. The  only  way  in  which  to  account  for 
these  features  is  to  suppose  that  the  archipelago 
has  been  peopled  by  migrations  from  the  near- 
est mainland.  This  explains  why  the  creatures 
there  are  most  like  the  creatures  of  Ecuador  and 
Peru,  and  it  also  explains  why  the  only  indige- 
nous animals  to  be  found  there  are  such  as  could 
have  flown  or  been  blown  thither,  or  such  as 
could  have  been  ferried  thither  on  floating  vege- 
tation. 

But  if  all  this  be  true  —  and  to-day  no  com- 
petent naturalist  doubts  it  —  a  conclusion  of 
vast  importance  immediately  follows.  If  the 
Galapagos  plants  and  animals  are  descended 
from  ancestors  that  migrated  thither  from  the 
continent,  they  have  been  modified  during  ages 
of  residence  in  the  islands,  until  they  have  come 
to  differ  specifically,  and  in  many  cases  generi- 
cally,  from  their  collateral  relations  on  the  main- 
land. And  this  amounts  to  saying  that  species 
are  not  fixed,  but  mutable,  —  that  every  distinct 
form  of  plant  and  animal  was  not  originally 
created  with  its  present  attributes,  but  that  some 
forms  have  arisen  from  the  modification  of  an- 
cestral forms. 


IN  MEMORIAM :  CHARLES  DARWIN 

In  this  way,  from  the  study  of  the  inhabit- 
ants of  a  single  well-defined  area,  Mr.  Darwin 
was  led  into  a  series  of  most  grand  and  startling 
considerations  relating  to  the  past  history  of 
life  upon  our  globe.  The  conclusions  thus  suc- 
cinctly stated  were  amply  confirmed  by  a  sur- 
vey of  the  distribution  of  organisms  all  over  the 
earth,  and  thus  was  inaugurated  the  study  of 
zoological  and  botanical  geography,  —  a  study 
which  in  half  a  century  has  reached  such  magnifi- 
cent proportions  in  the  great  works  of  Hooker 
and  Wallace,  and  which  owes  its  wonderful  pro- 
gress mainly  to  the  sagacious  impulse  commu- 
nicated at  the  outset  by  Mr.  Darwin.  It  has 
now  become  well  established  that  in  very  few 
cases,  if  any,  have  animals  and  plants  originated 
exactly  in  the  places  whefe  we  now  find  them, 
but  that  they  are  almost  always  the  offspring 
of  immigrants ;  and  the  study  of  the  ancient 
migrations  of  the  progenitors  of  living  plants 
and  animals  has  begun  to  throw  a  flood  of  light 
upon  the  history  of  the  changes  that  have  taken 
place  in  the  physical  geography  of  the  earth. 

The    conception    of  the    origin    of  species 
through  "descent  with  modifications"  having 
been  thus  forcibly  suggested  to  Mr.  Darwin  by 
the  facts  of  geographical  distribution,  it  was  still 
further  strengthened  by  a  study  of  the  geologi 
cal  succession  of  extinct  organisms  and  thei 
relations  to  living  organisms  in  the  same  areas. 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Such  broad  facts  as  the  successive  appearance 
of  various  sloth-like  and  armadillo-like  animals 
in  South  America,  or  of  various  marsupials  and 
monotremes  in  Australia,  forcibly  suggest  the 
descent  of  the  later  forms  from  the  earlier  ones 
that  lived  in  the  same  countries.  Of  like  im- 
port is  the  general  fact  that  in  the  course  of 
geological  succession  any  given  organism  is  sure 
to  be  intermediate  in  character  between  those 
that  have  preceded  and  those  that  have  followed 
it.  But  still  more  powerfully  suggestive  even 
than  this  is  the  fact  that,  in  proportion  as  we  go 
back  in  geologic  time,  we  find  the  characteris- 
tics of  plants  and  animals  to  be  less  and  less 
distinctly  specialized :  so  that,  for  example,  in 
the  Eocene  period,  instead  of  horses  and  tapirs 
such  as  now  exist  we  flnd  an  animal  something 
like  a  tapir  and  something  like  a  horse;  and 
instead  of  leopards  and  wolves  and  bears  we 
find  carnivorous  animals,  not  specialized  as  of 
feline  or  canine  or  ursine  family,  but  with  some 
points  of  resemblance  to  all  three,  and  with 
some  points  like  opossums  and  wombats  into 
the  bargain.  In  conformity  with  this  general 
principle,  the  arrangement  of  organisms  accord- 
ing to  their  succession  in  geologic  time  would 
be  like  the  branches  and  branchlets  of  a  tree, 
which  is  the  typical  form  of  arrangement  where 
the  link  that  connects  the  facts  arranged  is  the 
link  of  parentage. 

320 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

But  just  here  the  facts  of  geological  succes- 
sion are  reinforced,  with  truly  overwhelming 
conclusiveness,  by  the  great  facts  of  classifica- 
tion in  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms.  This 
branching  tree-like  arrangement,  which  alone 
correctly  represents  the  relationships  of  organ- 
isms in  their  geological  succession,  is  at  the  same 
time  the  only  possible  arrangement  by  which 
the  likenesses  and  affinities  among  existing  or- 
ganisms can  be  represented  with  anything  like 
an  approach  to  correctness.  The  facts  of  palae- 
ontology exactly  dovetail  in  with  those  of  tax- 
onomy, and  serve  to  elucidate  and  emphasize 
them.  Many  eminent  naturalists  before  Cuvier 
attempted  to  classify  all  animals  in  a  linear  series, 
but  Cuvier  proved  once  for  all  that  no  such 
arrangement  is  possible.  The  only  feasible 
arrangement  is  that  of  groups  within  groups, 
diverging  like  the  branches  and  twigs  of  what  we 
aptly  term  a  "  family-tree  ;  "  and  this  fact  not 
only  strongly  suggests  the  theory  of  "  descent 
with  modifications,"  but  is  indeed  utterly  in- 
compatible with  any  other  theory. 

Further  powerful  evidence  in  favour  of  the 
same  view  is  furnished  by  countless  familiar  facts 
of  morphology  and  embryology.  On  the  theory 
of"  descent  with  modifications,"  it  is  intelligible 
that  all  the  classes  and  orders  of  the  vertebrate 
sub-kingdom,  for  example,  should  be  con- 
structed on  exactly  the  same  fundamental  plan, 
321 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

—  that  the  arms  of  men,  the  fore-legs  of  quad- 
rupeds, the  paddles  of  cetacea,  the  wings  of  birds, 
and  the  pectoral  fins  of  fishes  should  be  struc- 
turally identical  with  one  another.  It  is  intelli- 
gible that  a  horse's  hoof  should  be,  as  it  is,  made 
up  of  toes  that  have  grown  together.  It  is  intel- 
ligible that  every  mammalian  embryo  should  be- 
gin, as  it  does,  to  develop  as  if  it  were  going  to 
become  a  fish,  circulating  its  blood  through  gills 
and  a  two-chambered  heart,  and  then,  changing 
its  course,  should  behave  as  if  it  were  going  to 
become  a  reptile  or  bird,  and  only  after  long 
delay  should  assume  the  distinctive  characteris- 
tics of  mammality.  It  is  intelligible  that  many 
snakes  should  possess  beneath  their  skin  the 
rudiments  of  limbs  ;  that  sundry  insects,  which 
never  fly,  should  have  wings  firmly  fastened 
down  to  their  sides  ;  and  that  the  embryos  of 
many  birds,  while  developing  in  the  egg,  should 
grow  temporary  teeth  within  their  little  beaks. 
But  it  is  only  on  the  theory  of  "  descent  with 
modifications  "  that  such  facts,  which  are  in  no 
wise  exceptional,  but  common  throughout  the 
entire  animal  kingdom,  have  any  meaning  what- 
ever. 

Many  of  these  facts  had  been  noticed  by  em- 
inent naturalists  before  Mr.  Darwin,  and  their 
incompatibility  with  any  theory  of  special  crea- 
tions had  also  been  observed  ;  but  it  was  Mr. 
Darwin  who  first  marshalled  them  into  one 
322 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

mighty  argument,  of  which  the  cumulative  re- 
sult was  that  the  phenomena  of  the  organic 
world  are  unintelligible  from  beginning  to  end 
save  on  the  theory  of  "  descent  with  modifica- 
tions." Had  Mr.  Darwin  done  nothing  but  this, 
it  would  have  given  him  a  peculiar  right  to  as- 
sociate his  name  with  the  development  theory, 
it  would  have  established  that  theory  on  a  basis 
of  "  convincing  probability,"  and  it  would  have 
entitled  him  to  a  high  place  in  the  history  of 
scientific  thought  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
But  Mr.  Darwin  did  not  stop  here.  Convinced 
by  such  considerations  as  those  just  presented 
that  the  specific  characters  of  plants  and  animals 
are  not  constant,  but  variable,  he  sought  for 
some  grand  all-pervading  cause  of  variation  in 
organisms,  and  his  search  was  crowned  with  suc- 
cess. This  was  the  achievement  which  in  his 
hands  raised  the  development  theory  from  the 
rank  of  a  brilliant  philosophical  speculation  into 
the  rank  of  an  irrefragable  scientific  discovery. 
This  was  the  achievement  which  gave  to  man- 
kind a  new  implement  of  research  and  a  new 
insight  into  the  workings  of  Nature,  and  it  was 
this  which  justifies  us  in  placing  Mr.  Darwin's 
name  beside  those  of  Newton  and  Descartes. 

The  method  by  which  Mr.  Darwin  succeeded 
In  discovering  the  cause  of  variation  in  organisms 
<vas  the  thoroughly  scientific  method  of  advan- 
cing tentatively  from  the  known  to  the  unknown. 
323 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Are  there  any  instances  in  which  the  forms  of 
plants  and  animals  have  actually  been  seen  to 
vary,  and,  if  there  are,  what  seems  to  have  been 
the  principal  cause  of  variation  in  these  in- 
stances ?  The  answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  The 
instances  are  very  numerous  indeed  in  which 
variations  —  and  very  marked  ones,  too  —  have 
been  wrought  in  the  characteristics  of  plants  and 
animals  through  the  agency  of  man.  The  phe- 
nomena of  variation  presented  by  animals  and 
plants  under  domestication  are  so  numerous  and 
so  complex  that  it  would  require  many  volumes 
to  describe  them.  Dogs,  horses,  pigs,  cattle, 
sheep,  rabbits,  pigeons,  poultry,  silk-moths,  ce- 
real and  culinary  plants,  fruits  and  flowers  innu- 
merable, have  been  reared  and  bred  by  man  for 
many  long  ages,  —  some  of  them  from  time  im- 
memorial. These  domesticated  organisms  man 
has  caused  to  vary,  in  one  direction  or  another, 
to  suit  his  natural  or  artificial  needs,  or  even  the 
mere  whim  of  his  fancy.  The  variations,  more- 
over, which  have  thus  been  produced  have  been 
neither  slight  nor  unimportant,  and  have  been 
by  no  means  confined  to  superficial  characteris- 
tics. Compare  the  thorough-bred  race- horse 
with  the  gigantic  London  dray-horse  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  Shetland  pony  on  the  other ;  or, 
among  pigeons,  contrast  the  pouter  with  the  fan- 
tail,  the  barb,  the  short-faced  tumbler,  or  the  ja- 
cobin, all  of  which  are  historically  known  to  have 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

descended  from  one  and  the  same  ancestral  form. 
The  differences  extend  throughout  the  whole 
bony  framework  as  well  as  throughout  the  mus- 
cular and  nervous  systems,  and  exceed  in  amount 
the  differences  by  which  naturalists  often  adjudge 
species  to  be  distinct.  Through  what  agency 
has  man  produced  such  results  as  these  ?  He 
has  produced  them  simply  by  taking  advantage 
of  a  slight  tendency  to  variation  which  exists 
perpetually  in  all  plants  and  animals,  and  which 
exhibits  itself  in  the  simple  fact  that  nowhere  do 
we  ever  find  any  two  individuals  exactly  alike. 
Taking  advantage  of  these  individual  variations, 
the  breeder  simply  selects  the  individuals  which 
best  suit  his  purpose,  and  breeds  them  apart  by 
themselves.  The  qualities  for  which  they  are  se- 
lected are  propagated  and  enhanced  through  in- 
heritance and  renewed  selection  in  each  succeed- 
ing generation,  until  by  the  slow  accumulation 
of  small  differences  a  new  race  is  formed.  And 
thus  we  have  peaches  and  almonds  from  a  com- 
mon source,  grapes  to  eat  and  grapes  to  make 
wine  of,  pointer-dogs  and  mastiffs,  and  so  on 
throughout  the  list  of  cultivated  plants  and  do- 
mesticated animals. 

These  facts  about  variation  under  domestica- 
tion are  for  the  most  part  well  known,  and  the 
alleged  cause  of  variation,  in  selection  by  man, 
is  not  an  occult  cause,  but  is  a  phenomenon  per- 
fectly familiar  to  every  one.  Starting  from  this 
325 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

point,  Mr.  Darwin  made  a  very  elaborate  study 
of  all  that  farmers,  horticulturists,  and  breeders 
could  impart  concerning  "  artificial  selection  ;  " 
and  more  especially  with  regard  to  pigeons  his 
own  observations  were  so  extensive  and  minute 
that,  when  the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  was  pub- 
lished, I  recollect  reading  one  silly  review,  in 
which  we  were  gravely  informed  that  here  was 
a  new  theory  of  development,  —  not  by  a  natu- 
ralist, but  by  a  mere  pigeon-fancier,  and  prob- 
ably worthy  of  very  little  consideration  ! 

Such  being  the  wonders  which  man  has 
wrought  within  a  comparatively  short  time 
through  "  artificial  selection "  in  the  breeding 
of  animals  and  plants,  the  question  next  arises 
whether  any  selective  process  like  this  has  been 
going  on  through  countless  ages  without  the 
intervention  of  man.  Can  it  be  that  there  is  a 
"  natural  selection "  of  individual  variations, 
whereby  new  species  are  produced  in  just  the 
same  way  that  breeders  produce  new  races  of 
pigeons  ?  There  is  such  a  "  natural  selection  " 
forever  going  on  as  one  of  the  inseparable  con- 
comitants of  organic  life;  and  it  was  just  in  the 
detection  of  this  great  truth  that  the  very  kernel 
of  Mr.  Darwin's  stupendous  discovery  consisted. 
It  was  here  that  the  poetic  or  creative  act  of 
genius  came  into  play,  just  as  it  did  in  Newton's 
discovery,  when  the  fall  of  the  moon  was  likened 
to  the  fall  of  the  apple,  and  the  tangential  force 
326 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

of  the  moon  to  the  tangential  force  of  a  stone 
whirled  at  the  end  of  a  string.  The  case  is  sim- 
ple enough,  when  creative  genius  has  once  ex- 
plained it.  So  great  is  the  destruction  of  organic 
life  that  out  of  hundreds  of  seeds,  or  spawn,  or 
ova,  but  one  or  two  ever  live  to  come  to  ma- 
turity and  reproduce  themselves  in  offspring. 
Such  is  the  result  of  the  universal  and  unrelent- 
jig  competition  between  organisms  for  the  means 
of  subsistence.  Any  creature  that  lives  to  re- 
produce its  kind  is  selected  from  out  of  a  thou- 
sand that  perish  prematurely,  and  its  selection 
is  evidence  of  its  better  adaptation  to  the  con- 
ditions amid  which  it  is  placed.  And  so  stern 
and  so  ubiquitous  is  the  competition  that  there 
is  no  individual  variation,  however  slight  or  ap- 
parently trivial,  that  is  not  liable  to  be  seized 
upon  and  enhanced  if  it  tend  in  any  way  to 
promote  the  survival  of  the  species.  Thus  it  is 
natural  selection  that  at  every  moment  preserves 
the  stability  of  a  species,  and  keeps  it  in  har- 
mony with  its  environment,  by  cutting  off  all 
individual  variations  that  oscillate  too  far  on 
either  side  of  a  prescribed  mean.  The  stability 
of  a  species  depends,  therefore,  upon  the  stabil- 
ity of  the  environment ;  and  the  only  condition 
under  which  a  species  could  remain  unchanged 
would  be,  that  it  should  remain  forever  exposed 
to  the  action  of  changeless  groups  of  circum- 
stances. But  this  has  never  been  the  case  with 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

any  species,  and  never  will  be.  The  habitable 
surface  of  the  earth  has  been  perpetually  chang- 
ing for  a  hundred  million  years,  and  the  relations 
between  the  countless  groups  of  organisms  that 
have  covered  its  surface  have  been  perpetually 
changing  in  endless  degrees  of  complexity ;  and 
in  such  a  world,  under  the  working  of  natural 
selection,  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  "  fixity 
of  species." 

Having  arrived  at  these  grand  conclusions,  it 
became  comparatively  easy  for  Mr.  Darwin  to 
go  on  and  trace  the  workings  of  natural  selection 
in  many  special  instances.  In  these  inquiries, 
upon  which  he  brought  to  bear  a  knowledge  of 
the  details  of  organic  life  more  vast  and  multi- 
farious than  has  ever  been  possessed  by  any 
other  man,  he  occupied  nearly  a  quarter  of  a 
century  before  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  time 
had  come  for  making  his  discovery  known  to 
the  world.  In  1 844,  he  wrote  out  a  brief  sketch 
of  the  conclusions  which,  as  he  modestly  says, 
"  then  seemed  to  me  probable  ;  "  and  this  sketch 
he  showed  to  his  friend  Hooker,  perhaps  also 
to  Lyell.  But  fifteen  years  more,  rich  in  ob- 
servation and  reflection,  passed  away,  and  still 
the  world  had  heard  nothing  about  the  origin 
of  species  by  means  of  natural  selection.  How 
much  longer  this  silence  might  have  lasted,  had 
not  an  unforeseen  circumstance  come  in  to 
break  it,  one  cannot  say.  But  no  doubt  it  would 
328 


IN  MEMORIAM :  CHARLES  DARWIN 

have  lasted  some  time  longer,  for  Mr.  Darwin 
did  not  wish  to  publish  his  conclusions  until  he 
had  given  due  attention  to  every  fact  and  every 
argument  which  might  in  any  way  bear  upon 
them ;  and  it  is  quite  evident  that  when  he 
wrote  the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  he  did  not  real- 
ize either  the  wonderful  maturity  which  his 
argument  had  attained,  or  the  overwhelming  co- 
gency with  which  he  was  then  actually  present- 
ing it  to  the  world.  It  was  very  characteristic 
of  Mr.  Darwin  —  into  the  fibre  of  whose  mind 
there  entered  not  the  smallest  shred  of  egotism 
or  of  the  pride  of  knowledge  —  to  make  so  many 
allowances  for  the  inevitable  incompleteness  of 
his  work,  when  judged  by  that  standard  of  ideal 
perfection  which  he  alone  among  men  was  able 
to  apply  to  it,  as  to  have  rendered  himself  in- 
capable for  the  time  being  of  appreciating  its 
real  magnitude.  In  writing  the  "  Origin  of 
Species,"  he  regarded  the  book  as  merely  a  pre- 
liminary outline  of  his  theory,  which  would  serve 
to  prevent  his  being  forestalled  by  any  one  else 
in  the  announcement  of  it,  and  he  made  frequent 
allusions  to  the  larger  and  more  elaborate  treatise 
in  which  he  intended  presently  to  follow  up  the 
exposition  and  to  reinforce  the  argument.  When 
I  first  met  Mr.  Darwin  in  London,  in  1873,  ^e 
told  me  that  he  was  surprised  at  the  great  fame 
which  his  book  instantly  won,  and  at  the  quick- 
ness with  which  it  carried  conviction  to  the 
329 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

minds  of  all  the  men  on  whose  opinions  he  set 
the  most  value.  The  success  of  his  theory  was, 
indeed,  wonderfully  rapid  and  complete.  To 
understand  him  was  to  agree  with  him,  and  be- 
fore ten  years  more  had  passed  by,  so  many  able 
men  had  become  expounders  and  illustrators  of 
the  theory  of  natural  selection  that  —  as  he  told 
me  —  it  seemed  no  longer  so  necessary  as  it  had 
once  seemed  for  him  to  write  the  larger  and 
more  elaborate  treatise.  The  learned  work  on 
the  "Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants  under 
Domestication,"  which  appeared  in  1868  in  two 
octavo  volumes,  formed  the  first  instalment  of 
this  long-projected  treatise.  The  second  part 
was  to  have  treated  of  the  variation  of  animals 
and  plants  through  natural  selection ;  and  a 
third  part  would  have  dealt  at  length  with  the 
phenomena  of  morphology,  of  classification,  and 
of  distribution  in  space  and  time.  But  these 
second  and  third  parts  were  never  published. 

I  alluded,  just  now,  to  the  "  unforeseen  cir- 
cumstance "  which  led  Mr.  Darwin  in  1859  to 
break  his  long  silence,  and  to  write  and  publish 
the  "  Origin  of  Species."  This  circumstance 
served,  no  less  than  the  extraordinary  success 
of  his  book,  to  show  how  ripe  the  minds  of  men 
had  become  for  entertaining  such  views  as  those 
which  Mr.  Darwin  propounded.  In  1858  Mr. 
Wallace,  who  was  then  engaged  in  studying  the 
natural  history  of  the  Malay  Archipelago,  sent  to 
330 


IN  MEMORIAM :   CHARLES  DARWIN 

Mr.  Darwin  (as  to  the  man  most  likely  to  under- 
stand him)  a  paper,  in  which  he  sketched  the  out- 
lines of  a  theory  identical  with  that  upon  which 
Mr.  Darwin  had  so  long  been  at  work.  The 
same  sequence  of  observed  facts  and  inferences 
that  had  led  Mr.  Darwin  to  the  discovery  of 
natural  selection  and  its  consequences  had  led 
Mr.  Wallace  to  the  very  threshold  of  the  same 
discovery ;  but  in  Mr.  Wallace's  mind  the  the- 
ory had  by  no  means  been  wrought  out  to  the 
same  degree  of  completeness  to  which  it  had 
been  wrought  in  the  mind  of  Mr.  Darwin.  In 
the  preface  to  his  charming  book  on  "  Natural 
Selection,"  Mr.  Wallace,  with  rare  modesty  and 
candour,  acknowledges  that,  whatever  value  his 
speculations  may  have  had,  they  have  been 
utterly  surpassed  in  richness  and  cogency  of 
proof  by  those  of  Mr.  Darwin.  This  is  no 
doubt  true,  and  Mr.  Wallace  has  done  such  good 
work  in  further  illustration  of  the  theory  that  he 
can  well  afford  to  rest  content  with  the  second 
place  in  the  first  announcement  of  it. 

The  coincidence,  however,  between  Mr.  Wal- 
lace's conclusions  and  those  of  Mr.  Darwin  was 
very  remarkable.  But,  after  all,  coincidences  of 
this  sort  have  not  been  uncommon  in  the  history 
of  scientific  inquiry.  Nor  is  it  at  all  surprising 
that  they  should  occur  now  and  then,  when  we 
remember  that  a  great  and  pregnant  discovery 
must  always  be  concerned  with  some  question 
331 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

which  many  of  the  foremost  minds  in  the  world 
are  busy  in  thinking  about.  It  was  so  with  the 
discovery  of  the  differential  calculus,  and  again 
with  the  discovery  of  the  planet  Neptune.  It 
was  so  with  the  interpretation  of  the  Egyptian 
hieroglyphics,  and  with  the  establishment  of  the 
undulatory  theory  of  light.  It  was  so,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent,  with  the  introduction  of  the 
new  chemistry,  with  the  discovery  of  the  me- 
chanical equivalent  of  heat,  and  the  whole  doc- 
trine of  the  correlation  of  forces.  It  was  so 
with  the  invention  of  the  electric  telegraph  and 
with  the  discovery  of  spectrum  analysis.  And 
it  is  not  at  all  strange  that  it  should  have  been 
so  with  the  doctrine  of  the  origin  of  species 
through  natural  selection.  The  belief  that  all 
species  have  originated  through  derivation  from 
other  species,  and  not  through  special  creation, 
had  been  held  by  part  of  the  scientific  world 
ever  since  the  time  of  Mr.  Darwin's  grandfather, 
who  was  one  of  its  earliest  and  most  eminent 
advocates.  Even  those  naturalists  who  did  not 
hold  this  belief  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  held 
any  antagonistic  belief,  inasmuch  as  the  so-called 
"  doctrine  of  special  creations  "  is  not  a  positive 
doctrine  at  all,  but  a  mere  confession  of  igno- 
rance, and  was  so  regarded  by  scientific  natural- 
ists, such  as  Owen,  for  example,  before  1859. 
The  truth  is  that  before  the  publication  of  the 
"  Origin  of  Species  "  there  was  no  opinion  what- 
332 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

ever  current  respecting  the  subject  that  deserved 
to  be  called  a  scientific  hypothesis.  That  the 
more  complex  forms  of  life  must  have  come  into 
existence  through  some  process  of  development 
from  simpler  forms  was  no  doubt  the  only  sensi- 
ble and  rational  view  to  take  of  the  subject;  but 
in  a  vague  and  general  opinion  of  this  sort  there 
is  nothing  that  is  properly  scientific.  A  scientific 
hypothesis  must  connect  the  phenomena  with 
which  it  deals  by  alleging  a  "  true  cause  ;  "  and 
before  1 859  no  one  had  suggested  a  "  true  cause  " 
for  the  origination  of  new  species,  although  the 
problem  was  one  over  which  every  philosophical 
naturalist  had  puzzled  since  the  beginning  of  the 
century.  This  explains  why  Mr.  Darwin's  suc- 
cess was  so  rapid  and  complete,  and  it  also  ex- 
plains why  he  came  so  near  being  anticipated. 
His  long  delay,  however,  in  bringing  forward  his 
theory  had  one  good  result.  The  work  was  so 
thoroughly  done  that,  although  Darwinism  has 
now  for  twenty-three  years  been  one  of  the  chief 
subjects  of  popular  discussion  in  all  the  civilized 
countries  of  the  world,  no  one  as  yet  seems  to 
have  discovered  any  argument  against  the  theory 
of  natural  selection  which  Mr.  Darwin  had  not 
himself  already  foreseen  and  considered  in  the 
first  edition  of  the  "  Origin  of  Species." 

After  an  interval  of  twelve  years  Mr.  Darwin 
followed  up  the  first  announcement  of  his  gen- 
eral theory  with  his  treatise  on  the  "  Descent  of 
333 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

Man,"  a  book  which  deals  with  a  subject  in  one 
respect  even  more  difficult  than  the  origin  of 
species.  In  his  earlier  book  Mr.  Darwin,  with 
masterly  skill,  brought  together  huge  masses 
of  facts,  and  showed  their  bearings  upon  a  few 
general  propositions  relating  to  the  whole  or- 
ganic world.  In  the  "  Descent  of  Man"  the 
problem  was  different.  Propositions  of  great 
generality,  such  as  had  been  established  in  the 
"  Origin  of  Species,"  served  here  as  fundamental 
principles  ;  but  they  had  to  be  supplemented  by 
a  consideration  of  the  enormously  complex  and 
heterogeneous  circumstances  which  attended  the 
origination  of  a  particular  genus.  It  is  enough 
to  say  that  in  the  treatment  of  this  arduous  prob- 
lem Mr.  Darwin  showed  no  less  acuteness  and 
grasp  than  had  been  displayed  in  his  earlier  work. 
In  connection  with  this  problem  of  the  origin 
of  the  human  race,  Mr.  Darwin  announced 
the  results  of  his  extensive  researches  into  the 
subject  of  sexual  selection  in  the  animal  king- 
dom. Some  time  before  this,  in  his  treatise  on 
the  "  Fertilization  of  Orchids,"  published  in 
1862,  he  had  called  attention  to  the  interde- 
pendence between  the  insect  world  and  the  world 
of  flowers.  Further  research  in  this  direction 
has  made  it  clear  that  the  beautiful  colours  and 
sweet  odours  of  flowers  are  due  to  selection  on 
the  part  of  insects.  The  bright  colours  and  de- 
licious perfumes  attract  insects,  who  come  to  sip 
334 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

the  nectar,  and  carry  away  on  their  backs  the 
pollen  with  which  to  fertilize  the  next  plant  they 
visit.  Thus  the  fairest  and  sweetest  flowers  are 
continually  selected  to  perpetuate  their  race,  and 
thus  have  insects  and  flowering  plants  been  de- 
veloped in  close  correlation  with  one  another. 

It  was  Mr.  Darwin's  good  fortune  to  live 
long  enough  to  see  his  theory  not  only  adopted 
by  all  competent  naturalists,  but  demonstrated 
by  crucial  evidence  in  the  case  of  at  least  one 
genus.  The  researches  of  Professor  Marsh  into 
the  palaeontology  of  the  horse  have  established 
beyond  question  the  descent  of  the  genus  equus 
from  a  five-toed  mammal  not  larger  than  a  pig, 
and  somewhat  resembling  a  tapir.  All  the 
"  missing  links  "  in  this  case  have  been  found ; 
and  thus  the  primitive  barbaric  hypothesis  of 
"  special  creations  "  may  be  said  to  have  dis- 
appeared forever  from  the  field  of  natural  his- 
tory. It  has  taken  its  place  by  the  side  of  the 
Ptolemaic  astronomy  and  the  dreams  of  the 
alchemists. 

Mr.  Darwin's  latest  books  belong  to  a  period 
in  which,  having  lived  to  witness  the  complete 
success  of  his  great  work,  he  has  employed  his 
time  in  recording  the  results  of  his  researches 
on  many  subsidiary  points,  of  no  little  interest 
and  importance.  The  treatises  on  the  Expres- 
sion of  the  Emotions  in  Man  and  Animals,  on 
the  Movements  and  Habits  of  Climbing  Plants, 
335 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

on  Insectivorous  Plants,  on  Cross  and  Self 
Fertilization,  on  the  Different  Forms  of  Flow- 
ers, and  on  the  Formation  of  Vegetable  Mould 
through  the  Action  of  Worms,  should  be  read 
as  models  of  sound  scientific  method  by  every 
one  who  cares  to  learn  what  scientific  method 
is.  They  may  be  counted,  too,  among  the 
most  entertaining  books  of  science  that  have 
ever  been  written  ;  and  the  points  that  have 
been  established  in  them,  taken  in  connection 
with  Mr.  Darwin's  previous  works,  make  up  an 
aggregate  of  scientific  achievement  such  as  has 
rarely  been  equalled. 

It  is  fitting  that  in  the  great  Abbey,  where 
rest  the  ashes  of  England's  noblest  heroes,  the 
place  of  the  discoverer  of  natural  selection  should 
be  near  that  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  Since  the 
publication  of  the  immortal  "  Principia,"  no 
single  scientific  book  has  so  widened  the  mental 
horizon  of  mankind  as  the  "  Origin  of  Species." 
Mr.  Darwin,  like  Newton,  was  a  very  young 
man  when  his  great  discovery  suggested  itself 
to  him.  Like  Newton,  he  waited  many  years 
before  publishing  it  to  the  world.  Like  New- 
ton, he  lived  to  see  it  become  part  and  parcel 
of  the  mental  equipment  of  all  men  of  science. 
The  theological  objection  urged  against  the 
Newtonian  theory  by  Leibnitz,  that  it  substi- 
tuted the  action  of  natural  causes  for  the  imme- 
diate action  of  the  Deity,  was  also  urged  against 

336 


IN  MEMORIAM:   CHARLES  DARWIN 

the  Darwinian  theory  by  Agassiz  ;  and  the  same 
objection  will  doubtless  continue  to  be  urged 
against  scientific  explanations  of  natural  phe- 
nomena so  long  as  there  are  men  who  fail  to 
comprehend  the  profoundly  theistic  and  reli- 
gious truth  that  the  action  of  natural  causes  is 
in  itself  the  immediate  action  of  the  Deity.  It 
is  interesting,  however,  to  see  that,  as  theolo- 
gians are  no  longer  frightened  by  the  doctrine 
of  gravitation,  so  they  are  already  beginning  to 
outgrow  their  dread  of  the  doctrine  />f  nat- 
ural selection.  On  the  Sunday  following  Mr. 
Darwin's  death,  Canon  Liddon,  at  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral,  and  Canons  Barry  and  Prothero,  at 
Westminster  Abbey,  agreed  in  referring  to  the 
Darwinian  theory  as  "  not  necessarily  hostile  to 
the  fundamental  truths  of  religion."  The  effect 
of  Mr.  Darwin's  work  has  been,  however,  to  re- 
model the  theological  conceptions  of  the  origin 
and  destiny  of  man  which  were  current  in  for- 
mer times.  In  this  respect  it  has  wrought  a 
revolution  as  great  as  that  which  Copernicus  in- 
augurated and  Newton  completed,  and  of  very 
much  the  same  kind.  Again  has  man  been 
rudely  unseated  from  his  imaginary  throne  in 
the  centre  of  the  universe,  but  only  that  he 
may  learn  to  see  in  the  universe  and  in  human 
life  a  richer  and  deeper  meaning  than  he  had 
before  suspected.  Truly,  he  who  unfolds  to  us 
the  way  in  which  God  works  through  the  world 
337 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  phenomena  may  well  be  called  the  best  of 
religious  teachers.  In  the  study  of  the  organic 
world,  no  less  than  in  the  study  of  the  starry 
heavens,  is  it  true  that  "  day  unto  day  uttereth 
speech,  and  night  unto  night  showeth  know- 
ledge." 

April,  1881. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


ABORIGINES    of   America   formerly 

thought   to  be    Mongols    or   ten 

tribes  of  Israel,  133. 
Acacias,  Miocene,  22. 
Adapis,  1 8  ;  mistaken  by  Cuvier  for 

an  anoplotherium,  18. 
./Eons,  geological,   relative  duration 

of,  4,  5,  7  }  division  of  the  ages 

into  ten,   8 ;    actual  duration  of 

one  of  the,  8,  10. 
Afghanistan    known   as  Ariana   in 

classical  antiquity,  74. 
Africa,  strata  of,  not  yet  explored 

geologically,  25. 

Agassiz,  Louis,  on  glacial  epoch,  58. 
Ahriman,   and  Aryana  Vaejo,  68  ; 

and  Hapta  Hendu,  71. 
Ahura-Mazda,    his   creation  of  the 

sixteen  countries,  68  ;  worship  of, 

70,    73  ;    leads  his    followers    to 

Bombay,  70. 
Akkadian  empire,  43. 
Albania,  brigandage  in,  208. 
Albanian  language  as  Hellenic,  85. 
Albert  of  Brandenburg,  catechism  of, 

87. 

Albigensians,  their  puritanism,  241. 
Ale  probably  an  Old  Aryan  word, 

127. 

Alleghanies  and  denudation,  12. 
Allen,  Grant,  on  history  of  nations 

as  affected  by  their  geographical 

positions,   1 68,    169  ;  and  Spen- 

cerian  evolutionists,  170. 
Allen,  J.  H.,    Christian   History  in 

its  three  Great  Periods,  237. 
Alps,  and  geological  denudation,  14; 


Eocene,   16;    Miocene,   21;    in 
gburial  epoch,  30. 

341 


Altaic  languages,  spoken  by  nomadic 
tribes  of  northern  Asia,  89;  com- 
prise Finnish,  Hungarian,  and 
Turkish,  138. 

American  civilization,  291. 

Ancestor-worship,  229. 

Anchitherium,  Eocene  ancestor  of 
the  horse,  18,  22. 

Animals,  migration  of  European,  in 
Pleistocene  age,  32 ;  domestic, 
harbingers  of  civilization,  41 ;  first 
domesticated  in  Central  Asia,  42  ; 
physical  and  mental  faculties  es- 
tablished before  birth  in  lower, 

283  ;  mental  flexibility  in  lower, 

284  ;  progression  of  mental  facul- 
ties in  lower,  284. 

Anoplotheria,  18. 

Anramainyus,  and  Aryana  Vaejo, 
68  5  and  Hapta  Hendu,  71. 

Antarctic  continent,  elevation  of, 
62,  63. 

Antelopes,  Eocene  ancestor  of,  18  ; 
Miocene  ancestor  of,  22. 

Apennines  in  Eocene  age,  16. 

Apes,  1 8  ;  Miocene,  23  ;  anthro- 
poid, 23  ;  as  ancestors  of  man, 
66  ;  intelligence  of  the  higher, 
286. 

Aphelion,  earth's,  49,  51. 

Aquinas,  Thomas,  260. 

Arabian  civilization  before  and  after 
Mohammed,  Outlines  of  Cosmic 
Philosophy  on,  1 70, 1 7 1 ;  Buckle'* 
theory  in  regard  to,  171. 

Arabic  words  in  Persian,  100. 

Arabs,  conquer  Iberians,  44  ;  com- 


plexion of,   93  ;  related  to  Je 
and  Syrians,  146. 


INDEX 


Aral,  sea  of,  in  Pliocene  age,  26  ; 
possibly  known  to  the  Aryans, 
129. 

Arctic  circle  in  Eocene  and  Mio- 
cene periods,  63. 

Aria  probably  not  connected  with 
Aryan,  80. 

Ario-vistus,  root  of,  probably  not 
Arya,  80. 

Aristotle,  Charles  Darwin  ranked 
with,  310. 

Arkwright,  Sir  Richard,  and  social 
conditions,  187,  188. 

Armada,  Spanish,  and  heretics  hi 
Spain,  231. 

Armenia  once  supposed  to  be  cradle 
of  human  race,  1 34. 

Armenian  language,  added  to  Indo- 
European  group,  80  ;  a  division  of 
Aryan  speech,  83. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  on  an  Eternal 
Power,  272. 

Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe,  The,  33- 
67. 

Art,  rudimentary  beginnings  of,  185. 

Arya,  in  Persian  proper  names,  76  ; 
not  the  root  of  Aria,  Arii,  and 
Erin,  80. 

Aryan,  applied  to  Indo-Persian  area, 
74  ;  derivation  of  the  word,  75  ; 
root  of  the  word  in  Persian  proper 
names,  76  ;  applied  to  Indo-Eu- 
ropean area,  76,  81  ;  never  the 
name  of  a  European  people,  80. 

Aryan  Forefathers,  Our,  68-96. 

Aryan  language,  discovery  of,  78- 
82,  97 ;  eight  principal  divisions 
of,  82;  what  its  extent  implies, 
91  }  consonant-changes  in,  103— 
108 ;  vowel-changes  in,  108  ; 
words  for  month  in,  109,  137; 
legends  in,  113  ;  words  for  house 
in,  114,  115;  words  for  "village 
in,  115;  words  for  town  in,  1 1 6  ; 
words  for  "wall  in,  117;  words 
for  roof  in,  117;  words  for  door 
in,  117,  118  ;  words  for  -window 
in,  1 1 8  ;  words  for  cow  and  bull 
in,  119,  120;  words  for  money 


in,  141  ;  words  for  horse  in,  122, 
125  ;  words  for  cat  in,  125,  126  j 
words  for  mouse  in,  126  ;  words 
for  fly  in,  1 26  ;  words  for  bee  in, 
127;  words  for  intoxicating  drinks 
in,  127}  words  for  sea  in,  128, 
129  ;  its  vocabulary  unrelated  to 
the  Semitic,  135  ;  its  inflection 
and  syntax  unrelated  to  Semitic, 
136  ;  dispersion  of,  148. 
Aryana  of  the  present  day,  82  ;  area 
of,  in  the  Old  World,  875  non- 
Aryan  languages  in,  87. 
Aryana  Vaejo,  creation  of,  by 
Ahura-Mazda,  68  ;  in  the  Vendi- 
dad,  68  ;  in  the  Minokhired,  73 ; 
located  near  the  sources  of  the 
Oxus  and  Jaxartes,  75  ;  the  home 
of  the  Aryan  race,  75,  81,  95. 
Aryans,  their  invasion  of  Europe, 
45>  65,  93  ;  physical  characteris- 
tics of,  45 ;  intermingling  of 
Iberians  and,  46  ;  separation  of 
Indo-Persians  and  Europeans  from, 
73  ;  the  name  of  ancient  Persians 
and  Hindus,  73  ;  Medes  called, 
74 ;  Aryana  Vaejo  in  central 
Asia  the  home  of,  75  ;  as  the 
people  who  speak  the  Aryan  lan- 
guage, 89,  91  ;  as  an  ethnologi- 
cal term,  89,  95  ;  the  light  com- 
plexion of,  in  Indo-Europeans,  93, 
94 ;  prehistoric  civilization  of, 
reconstructed  by  means  of  lan- 
guage, 113-129,  147;  political 
organization  of,  extremely  simple, 
130;  early  heroes  of,  unknown, 
185  ;  compared  with  Iroquois 
Indians,  203.  See  Indo-Euro- 
peans and  Old  Aryan. 

Asia,  northern  extent  in  Pliocene 
age,  25  ;  separated  from  Europe 
in  Tertiary  period,  25  ;  repeatedly 
joined  to  North  America,  133. 

Asses,  learned,  286. 

Assyrian  language  closely  related  to 
Hebrew  and  Syriac,  146,  147. 

Asturias,  language  of  the,  88. 

Athanasians,  237. 


342 


INDEX 


Atlantic  ridge,  in  Cretaceous  period, 
16;  in  Miocene  age,  21  j  in 
Pliocene  age,  26,  33. 

Atlantosaurus,  discovery  of,  6. 

Atoms,  motion  of,  254;  Clifford's 
description  of,  296. 

Australia,  as  Aryan,  82 ;  foreign 
plants  and  animals  supplanting  the 
native,  317;  appearance  of  mar- 
supials and  monotremes  in,  320. 

Automatism  of  repeated  impressions, 
281-283. 

Auvergne,  hippopotamus  appears  in 
Pliocene  strata  of,  27  ;  mountains 
of,  in  Ice  age,  30. 

Avar  a  in  European  words,  81. 

Average,  the,  in  species,  158-161  ; 
in  man's  mental  capacity,  158- 
161. 

Ayra,  applied  in  Sanskrit  to  culti- 
vators of  the  soil,  75  $  root  of 
Persian  proper  names,  76. 

Azara,  Felix  de,  on  the  language  of 
South  American  Indians,  156. 

Baboons,  Miocene,  23. 

Badger  in  the  Recent  period,  41. 

Bagehot,  Walter,  his  "  golden  little 

book,"    1 68}    on    conditions   of 

progress,  170. 
Bakhdhi,    creation   of,    by   Ahura- 

Mazda,  69. 
Baktria,    creation    of,    by   Ahura- 

Mazda,   69 ;  Zendavesta   written 

in  dialect  of,  69. 
Baltic  Sea,   in  Tertiary  period,  25  ; 

in  glacial  epochs,  30. 
Bamboos  in  Pliocene  age,  26. 
Bask   language  as  an  aboriginal  lan- 
guage in  Europe,  88. 
Bask  people,  complexion  of,  93. 
Batrachians,  earliest,  7. 
Bavaria  in  Silurian  age,  14. 
Beagle,   the    voyage  of  the,    312; 

scientific    results    of  the    voyage, 

312-315. 
Bears,    Pliocene,    27  ;    Pleistocene, 

29,  41  ;  cave,   31,  41  ;  Recent, 

41  j  intelligence  of,  developed  in 


infancy,  285  ;  teachable,  286 j 
representative  of,  in  Eocene  period, 
320. 

Bee,  Aryan  words  for,  127. 

Beer,  doubtful  if  an  Old  Aryan  word, 
127. 

Belisarius  and  his  environment,  187. 

Bell,  Sir  Charles,  assisted  in  publica- 
tion of  results  of  voyage  of  Beagle, 

313- 

Berecynthian  Mother,  adoption  of 
the  worship  of,  239. 

Berkeley,}.  M.,  assisted  in  publica- 
tion of  results  of  voyage  of  Beagle, 
313. 

Berwick,  meaning  of  the  word,  1 1 6. 

Bignonias,  Miocene,  22. 

Bigotry  co-existing  with  elevation  of 
character,  194. 

Biography,  how  far  useful  in  socio- 
logy, 175-178. 

Birds,  earliest,  6,  7  ;  teeth  in  em- 
bryonic, 322. 

Bison,  Pleistocene,  29  j  in  York- 
shire, 31. 

Black  Sea  in  Tertiary  period,  26. 

Bleda  and  the  Moriscoes,  222. 

Boar,  wild,  Pleistocene,  29 ;  Re- 
cent, 41. 

Bogomilians,  their  puritanism,  241. 

Bohemia,  in  Silurian  age,  14 ;  in 
Cretaceous  period,  16. 

Bohemian  language  as  branch  of 
Slavonic  speech,  87. 

Bokhara,  Tartaric  language  of,   89. 

Bollandists  and  the  Inquisition,  191. 

Bopp,  Franz,  his  discoveries  in  com- 
parative philology,  80,  122. 

Borromeo,  Carlo,  Saint,  and  perse- 
cution, 194. 

Bowditch,  Nathaniel,  his  translation 
of  Mecanique  Celeste,  282. 

Brain,  feeling  and  molecular  motion 
in  the,  302—306. 

Brasseur  de  Bourbourg,  C.  E.,  on 
migrations,  134. 

Breton  language,  85. 

Brigandage,  extinct  in  civilized  com- 
munities, 208. 


343 


INDEX 


British  Isles,  in  Silurian  age,  14; 
in  Eocene,  16,  17  ;  in  Miocene, 
ai  ;  in  Pliocene,  26  ;  in  glacial 
epoch,  30  5  in  Pleistocene,  3  3  ; 
in  Recent,  40. 

British  people,  complexion  of,  94. 

Brittany,  dialect  of,  as  Kymric,  85. 

Bronze  age,  the,  45. 

Brother^  derivation  of,  103. 

Buckle,  H.  T.,  on  changes  in  Ara- 
bian civilization  before  and  after 
Mohammed,  171  ;  on  intellectual 
and  moral  progress  in  civilization, 
193  }  on  causes  of  persecution, 
194—196  ;  on  Scotch  divines, 
197  ;  on  expulsion  of  the  Moors 
from  Spain,  aaa. 

Biichner,  F.  K.  C.  L.,  and  tendency 
of  modern  thought,  247  j  mate- 
rialism as  held  by,  253. 

Bulgarian,  Old,  as  branch  of  Slavonic 
speech,  87. 

Bull,  Aryan  words  for,  xao. 

Bunsen,  C.  K.  J.,  Baron,  on  crea- 
tion of  the  sixteen  countries  by 
Ahura-Mazda,  70. 

Caballus,  in  Latin,  124. 

Cabul,  known  as  Ariana  in  classical 
antiquity,  74. 

,  Julius,  Froude's  life  of,  and 
Mommsen's,  compared,  1 82. 

California,  antiquity  of  man  in,  28. 

Calvin,  John,  and  persecution,  194  j 
and  essential  truths  of  religion, 
273. 

Cambrian  epoch,  records  of  life  in, 
4,  7- 

Camel,  Eocene  representative  of,  19. 

Camphor-trees,  Miocene,  22. 

Carafla,  G.  P.  (Paul  IV.),  and 
persecution,  194. 

Carboniferous  epoch,  5,  7  ;  physi- 
cal contour  of  Europe  in,  15. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  his  great -man 
method  of  dealing  with  history 
commented  upon  by  Spencer, 


I73~I75  j    on  God  in  the  uni- 
verse, 275. 

344 


Carnivora,  Eocene,  19  ;  reached 
their  highest  point  in  Miocene 
age,  22. 

Carpathian  mountains  in  Eocene  age, 
16. 

Caspian  Sea,  in  Tertiary  period,  26  ; 
possibly  known  to  the  Aryans, 
189. 

Cat,  Aryan  words  for,  125,  126; 
not  domesticated  by  the  Greeks 
and  Romans,  126. 

Catholic  Church  in  the  future,  263. 

Caucasus,  aboriginal  dialects  in,  88  ; 
languages  of,  belong  to  the  Finno- 
Tataric  family,  150. 

Caucasus  mountains  in  Eocene  age, 
16. 

Cause,  304. 

Cave-men,  advent  of,  34,  47  ;  con- 
temporary with  the  woolly  rhi- 
noceros and  mammoth,  365  where 
found,  37 ;  their  mode  of  life, 
37  ;  their  drawings  and  carvings 
of  animals,  38,  185 ;  probably 
identical  with  Eskimos,  39,  47  ; 
antiquity  of,  65  ;  gleams  of  divine 
intelligence  in,  66. 

Celebes,  languages  of,  156. 

Cervantes  Saavedra,  M.  de,  and  ex- 
pulsion of  the  Moriscoes,  223. 

Chalk,  Huxley  on,  1 5. 

Chamois,  Pleistocene,  29. 

Changes  in  communities,  as  due  to 
accumulated  influences  of  individ- 
uals, 164,  165  j  Outlinet  of  Cos- 
mic Philosophy  on,  170-171} 
influence  of  environment  in,  1 66, 
167533  due  to  the  cumulative 
effect  of  individual  actions  in  re- 
lation to  environing  conditions, 
167;  Bagehot  on,  168  ;  Grant 
Allen  on,  168. 

Chemistry,  the  new,  introduction  of, 

33*- 
Chert  implements  of  the  river-drift 

men,  35. 
Chili,  its  flora  and  fauna  compared 


with  those  of  the  Galapagos  Is- 
lands, 316. 


INDEX 


Chimpanzee,  25  ;  as  the  forefather 
of  man,  287. 

Chinese  language,  Aryan  nanies  in, 
120;  how  related  to  the  other 
Mongolian  languages,  152-154, 

Chinese  people,  complexion  of,  93  ; 
members  of  the  Mongolian  race, 
I  Si- 
Christianity,  and  recognition  of  the 
individual,  235,  243  ;  its  perma- 
nence consists  in  making  right 
conduct  from  pure  motives  the 
condition  of  salvation,  236  ;  and 
the  church  militant,  236 ;  be- 
came paganized  in  Christianizing 
the  pagan  world,  239. 

Christmas,  adoption  of,  239. 

Church  militant,  organization  of, 
236  ;  its  appeal  to  feeling  of  cor- 
porate responsibility,  238,  239, 
241  ;  its  task  of  civilizing  the 
barbaric  world,  238  ;  partly  pa- 
ganized, 239  ;  persecutions  by,  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  240  ;  and 
Puritanism,  241. 

Cinnamon-trees,  Miocene,  22  ;  Plio- 
cene, 27. 

Cirripedia,  Darwin's  monographs  on, 
3'4- 

Civets,  Miocene,  22. 

Civilization,  industrial,  185-190. 
See  Industrial  arts. 

Clan  stage  of  social  life,  its  idea  of 
corporate  responsibility,  217,  227  ; 
development  of,  from  the  family, 
227 ;  military  and  ecclesiastical 
discipline  in,  228  ;  ancestor-wor- 
ship in,  229. 

Clarendon,  meaning  of  the  word, 
xi6. 

Classification  of  species  according  to 
genetic  kinship,  321  j  proves 
Darwinian  theory,  321. 

Clifford,  W.  K.,  Lectures  and  Es- 
says, 292 ;  his  death  from  over- 
work, 292 ;  his  achievements, 
294 ;  on  motions  of  molecules, 
296—298  ;  on  objects  and  ejects, 
300—302  j  on  consciousness  and 


molecular  morion,  302-306  5  hti 
anti-theological  bias,  307. 

Climate  of  Europe,  in  Eocene  ag», 
*7>  3°>  60;  in  Miocene,  21, 
60;  in  Pliocene,  26,  30  j  hi 
Pleistocene,  29-33,  60. 

Club-mosses  in  Carboniferous  epoch, 

Si  15- 

Coal-bed  of  Europe,  15. 
Cockney  misuse  of  A,  ioa. 
Codfish,  instinct  of,  282,  283. 
Ccenopithecus,  18. 
Cognition,    ejective    and    objective, 

299. 

Coincident  discoveries,  331,  332. 
Coleoptera  in  the  Galapagos  Islands, 

3*5- 

Colours  of  flowers,  334. 

Columbus,  Christopher,  and  social 
conditions,  187. 

Comfort,  physical,  within  reach  of 
all,  209  ;  growth  or"  the  taste  for, 
210. 

Commodus,  Emperor,  and  persecu- 
tion, 194. 

Comparative  method  of  study,  rise 
of,  77  ;  in  study  of  the  Aryan 
race,  96. 

Competition  between  organisms,  327. 

Complexions  of  Indo-European  peo- 
ples, 92  ;  in  reference  to  the  suc- 
cessive Aryan  invasions,  93. 

Comte,  Auguste,  and  influence  of 
individuals  on  history,  172;  on 
tendency  of  modern  thought, 
247  ;  his  use  of  the  word  meta- 
physical, 250  ;  and  unity  of  be- 
lief, 264. 

Conifers,  in  Miocene  age,  21. 

Connecticut  Valley,  Triassic  rocks 
of,  6. 

Consciousness,  always  associated  with 
matter  in  our  experience,  253, 
254 ;  and  molecular  motion  in 
the  brain,  255,  256,  302—306; 
and  matter,  incommensurable, 
257  ;  objects  and  ejects  in,  300- 
302  ;  as  a  group  of  "  psychical 
shocks,"  305. 


345 


INDEX 


Consonant-changes  in  Aryan  lan- 
guages, 103-108. 

Continents,  their  position  practically 
the  same  throughout  the  ages, 
13  ;  change  in  superficial  con- 
tour of,  14. 

Contour  of  Europe,  in  Silurian  age, 
14;  in  Carboniferous,  Triassic, 
Juriassic,  and  Cretaceous,  1 5 ;  in 
Eocene,  1 6  ;  in  Miocene,  20  ;  in 
Pliocene,  26  ;  in  Pleistocene,  29, 
33 ;  in  Glacial  period,  30,  56, 
58  ;  in  Recent  period,  40. 

Contract  and  status,  133. 

Cook,  Captain  James,  numerals  in 
the  language  of  Tahiti  at  the  time 
of,  156. 

Coral-reefs,  Darwin  on,  314. 

Cornwall,  Kymric  dialect  formerly 
spoken  in,  85. 

Corporate  responsibility,  in  the  tribal 
system,  217, 127-130,  243,  261, 
290  ;  feeling  of,  pervaded  the  life 
of  ancient  society,  218,  aa6, 
261  ;  as  the  main  cause  of  perse- 
cution, 119,  230-232,  261  ;  at 
the  root  of  Spanish  persecution, 
131  ;  and  the  persecutions  of 
Mary  Tudor,  231  ;  conditions 
which  fostered  it,  overthrown  by 
establishment  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, 233,  243,  290  ;  overthrown 
by  Christianity,  235,  243  ;  as- 
sumption of,  by  the  church,  238, 
239,  241. 

Correlation  of  forces,  254;  and 
molecular  motion,  255  ;  simul- 
taneous discoveries  in,  332. 

Coulanges,  N.  D.  F.  de,  works  of, 
176. 

Cow,  Aryan  words  for,  119,  120  5 
prominent  in  early  Aryan  thought, 
121  ;  used  as  money,  121  ;  ma- 
ternal instinct  of  the,  288. 

Cranes,  Miocene,  22. 

Creeds,  religious,  the  destruction  of 
present,  247,  249. 

Cretaceous  epoch,  trees  in,  6  ;  physi- 
cal contour  of  Europe  in,  15. 


Croatian  a  branch  of  Slavonic  speech, 
87. 

Croll,  James,  on  our  comprehension 
of  a  million  of  years,  10  ;  his  Cli- 
mate and  Time,  12;  on  position 
of  the  great  oceans,  14  ;  astro- 
nomical interpretation  of  glaciation 
of  northern  hemisphere,  48—65. 

Cruelty,  connected  with  primitive 
warfare,  202  ;  in  persecutions, 
204 ;  diminution  of,  due  to  the 
widening  of  human  sympathies, 

206  ;  diminished  by  industrialism, 

207  ;  replaced  by  humane  feelings, 
207,  208. 

Cruelty  to  Animals,  Society  for  the 

Prevention  of,  208. 
Crusades  and  persecution  in  southern 

France,  240. 

Crustaceans,  earliest,  5,  7. 
Cuneiform   inscriptions,    of  Darius, 

74;   Persian,  83. 
Cuvier,  G.  C.  L.  F.D.,  Baron,  and 

Eocene  mammals,    18  ;  and   the 

comparative  method  of  study,  77. 
Cycads,  Miocene,  22. 

Daevas  of  Ahriman,  68. 

Dalton,  J.  C.,  and  the  believers  in 
phlogiston,  176. 

Danube,  valley  of,  in  the  Miocene 
age,  20  ;  as  a  Keltic  name,  84. 

Darius  Hystaspes,  and  the  Zenda- 
vesta,  69 ;  declares  himself  an 
Aryan,  74. 

Darwin,  Charles,  author  of  a  medi- 
cal essay,  311. 

Darwin,  Charles  R.,  on  our  concep- 
tion of  a  million  of  years,  10  ;  his 
death  premature,  308,  309  ;  his 
freshness  of  spirit  and  sagacity, 
308,  309;  achievements  of,  310  ; 
his  family  name  already  famous  at 
the  time  of  his  birth  in  1809, 
310;  his  ancestors,  310,  311; 
his  relatives  and  sons,  311  ;  re- 
lieved from  the  necessity  of  earn- 
ing a  living,  312;  receives  Mas- 
ter's degree  and  embarks  on  the 


346 


INDEX 


Beagle,  312;  scientific  results  of    Dawkins,  Boyd,    on   man   and  the 


the  voyage  on  the  Beagle,  312- 
315  ;  publishes  Journal  of  Re- 
searches, 313;  publishes  Volcanic 
Islands,  Geological  Observations  on 
South  America,  and  Coral  Reefs, 
313,  314;  publishes  Monograph 
of  the  Cirripedia,  314  ;  publishes 
Origin  of  Species,  315,  328  ;  his 
study  of  the  flora  and  fauna  of  the 
Galapagos  Islands,  3 1 5-3 1 9 ;  inau- 
gurates the  study  of  zoological  and 
botanical  geography,  319;  his  con- 
ception of  Descent  with  Modifica- 
tions, 319-323  ;  his  discovery  of 
the  law  of  natural  selection,  323- 
328  ;  his  plans  for  a  more  elabo- 
rate work  on  species,  329  ;  the 
adoption  of  his  theories,  329, 
333.  335  >  publishes  Variation  of 
Animals  and  Plants  under  Domes- 
tication, 330;  publishes  Descent 
of  Man  and  Fertilization  of  Or- 
chids, 333,  334;  publishes  Ex- 
pression of  the  Emotions  in  Man 
and  Animals,  Movements  and 
Habits  of  Climbing  Plants,  In- 
sectivorous Plants,  Cross  and  Self 
Fertilization,  Different  Forms  of 
Flowers,  Formation  of  Vegetable 
Mould  through  the  Action  of 
Worms,  335,  336;  his  work 
compared  with  Sir  Isaac  New- 
ton's, 336. 

Darwin,  Erasmus,  an  ingenious  and 
original  thinker,  310;  author  of 
Botanic  Garden,  310. 

Darwin,  Sir  Francis,  author  of  a 
book  on  botany,  310  ;  a  keen  ob- 
server of  animals,  311. 

Darwin,  R.  W.,  father  of  C.  R. 
Darwin,  311. 

Darwinism  and  other  Essays  on  the 
meaning  of  infancy,  227. 

Dasyus  races  of  Hindustan,  74. 

Davila,  G.  G.,  on  the  expulsion  of 
the  Moriscoes,  223. 

Davy,  Sir  Humphry,  and  believers 
in  phlogiston,  176. 


Eocene  age,  20  ;  his  Early  Man 
in  Britain,  23  ;  on  river-drift  men, 
34  ;  on  cave-men,  39. 

Deer,  Eocene  ancestor  of,  18  ; 
Miocene  ancestor  of,  22 ;  Plio- 
cene, 27;  Pleistocene,  29,  31. 

Dehra  Dhun,  meaning  of,  116. 

Deinotherium,  22. 

Dentreath,  Dame  Dolly,  last  speaker 
of  the  Cornish  dialect  of  Kymric, 
85. 

Denudation,  geological,  rate  of,  12. 

Descartes,  Rene,  C.  R.  Darwin 
ranked  with,  310. 

Descent  with  modifications,  sug- 
gested by  facts  of  geographical 
distribution  traced  by  Darwin  in 
the  Galapagos  Islands,  319; 
strengthened  by  facts  of  geological 
succession,  320  ;  by  genetic  classi- 
fication of  species,  321  ;  by  mor- 
phology and  embryology,  321. 

Destiny  of  Man,  on  the  meaning  of 
infancy,  279. 

Deviations  from  an  average,  158  ; 
in  species,  159,  160,  162;  in 
mental  capacity,  159;  law  of, 
inexplicable,  161. 

Devonian  epoch,  fishes  and  insects 
in>  S>  7- 

Dialects,  the  rise  of,  141-143,  145  ; 
the  Parisian  and  Tuscan,  142, 
143  ;  the  decay  of,  143,  145  j 
of  savages,  155,  156. 

Differential  calculus,  simultaneoiw 
discoveries  in,  332. 

Discoverers,  the  great,  belong  to 
modern  times,  184,  185;  social 
conditions  and,  185-190. 

Dnieper  a  Keltic  name,  84. 

Dog,  harbinger  of  civilization,  41  ; 
is  teachable,  286  ;  domesticated 
by  man,  324. 

Domestication,  variation  in  plants 
and  animals  under,  324. 

Dominic,  Saint,  his  biography  by 
Lacordaire,  191  •  and  persecution, 
194. 


347 


INDEX 


Don,  in  European  geographical  names, 

84  ;  a  Keltic  name,  84. 
Door,  Aryan  words  for,  117,  118. 
Dorians,  45. 
Dragons  of  the  prime,  6. 
Drake,  Sir  Francis,  82. 
Dravidian  languages,  138. 
Dryopithecus,  23,  24. 
Duelling  nearly  obsolete,  208. 
Dumbarton,   meaning  of  the  word, 

1 1 6. 

Dundee,  meaning  of  the  word,  1 1 6. 
Dunkeld,  meaning  of  the  word,  1 1 6. 

Eagles,  Miocene,  22. 

Earth,  crust  of  the,  how  long  solidi- 
fied, 9  ;  oscillations  of,  13,  314. 

Earth's  orbit,  changes  of,  the  cause 
of  glacial  period,  48  ;  as  affecting 
our  change  of  seasons,  48  ;  periods 
of  high  eccentricity  of,  50,  59, 
61,65;  as  affecting  the  climate 
of  the  northern  hemisphere,  51, 
55,  56  ;  as  affecting  die  climate 
of  the  southern  hemisphere,  53, 
56  ;  as  the  cause  of  various  glacial 
periods,  60. 

Easter,  adoption  of,  239. 

Ecuador,  its  flora  and  fauna  com- 
pared with  those  of  the  Galapagos 
Islands,  315-318- 

Educability,  of  the  lower  animals, 
284;  of  higher  mammals,  286. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  as  a  materialist, 
250. 

Effective  desire  of  accumulation  and 
the  complication  of  mental  and 
moral  processes,  197-201. 

Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  simultaneous 
discoveries  in,  332. 

Ejects  or  inferred  existences,  300- 
302,  305. 

Elagabalus  and  persecution,  194. 

Electric  telegraph,  invention  of,  332. 

Elephant,  first  appears  in  Pliocene 
age,  27  ;  Pleistocene,  29  ;  Re- 
cent, 41  ;  is  teachable,  286. 

Elk,  in  Yorkshire,  31,  41  ;  Irish,  in 
Recent  period,  41. 


348 


Elms,  Miocene,  22. 

Embryology,  facts  of,  in  proof  of 
Darwinian  theory,  322. 

England,  advantage  of  her  social 
plasticity  in  her  rivalry  with  France, 
291. 

English  Channel,  in  the  Miocene 
age,  21  ;  in  Recent  period,  40. 

English  language,  the  probable  future 
of,  82,  144  ;  a  branch  of  Teu- 
tonic speech,  86,  100  ;  few  Kelt- 
isms  in,  90  j  half  made  up  of  Latin 
words,  90. 

English  people,  as  Aryans,  76  j 
much  Keltic  blood  and  few  Keltic 
words  among  the,  90  ;  many 
Latin  words  and  little  Roman 
blood  among  the,  90. 

Environment,  and  geniuses,  162, 
1 86  ;  its  influence  in  causing  so- 
cial changes,  166,  168  j  Grant 
Allen  on,  169  ;  and  industrialism, 
186-188. 

Eocene  age,  7  ;  beginning  of,  10  ; 
physical  contour  of  Europe  in, 
1 6  ;  mammals  of,  16-20,  28  ; 
animals  less  distinctly  specialized 
in,  1 8,  19,  28,  320  ;  vegetation 
of,  1 8  ;  man  did  not  exist  in, 
20  ;  lemuroids  of,  are  the  link 
between  man  and  horse,  1 8  ;  cli- 
mate of  Europe  in,  60. 

Eozoon,  Canadian,  4,  7. 

Equinoxes,  precession  of,  50. 

Ericsson,  John,  precursors  of,    185. 

Erin,  etymology  of  the  word,  80. 

Error,  Laplace's  law  of,  297. 

Eskimos,  probably  sole  survivors  of 
the  Cave-men,  40  j  allied  to  the 
Samoyeds,  151. 

Esthonian  as  a  non-Aryan  language, 
88. 

Ethel,  as  the  root  of  Old  English 
proper  names,  76. 

Ethics  and  evolution,  276. 

Ethnology,  change  in  our  point  of 
view  of,  in  recent  years,  133. 

Etruskan  possibly  an  aboriginal  lan- 
guage in  Europe,  88. 


INDEX 


Etruskans  were  Iberians,  45. 

Etymology,  former  unscientific  char- 
acter of  the  study  of,  97  ;  orderly 
inference  substituted  for  guess- 
work in  the  study  of,  99  ;  resem- 
blance a  treacherous  guide  in,  104. 

Euphrates,  70. 

Europe,  before  the  Arrival  of  Man, 
1-32  ;  succession  of  races  in,  46, 
92. 

Euskarian  an  aboriginal  language  in 
Europe,  88. 

Evarts,  W.  M.,  at  the  farewell  din- 
ner to  Herbert  Spencer,  268. 

Evolution,  theory  of,  in  the  philoso- 
phy of  the  present  age,  259  ;  and 
essential  truths  of  religion,  274, 
277  ;  asserts  the  presence  of  an 
Eternal  Power  in  the  universe, 
274  ;  asserts  the  principles  of 
right  living,  277. 

Exclusive  salvation,  dogma  of,  and 
persecution,  195  j  discredited 
through  modern  scepticism,  196. 

Executions,  private,  208. 

Explanations  after  the  fact,  169, 
179. 

Externality,  302. 

Extravagant  expenditure,  causes  of, 
199/200. 

Fable  of  the  Sheep  and  the  Horses, 
no,  in. 

Faculties,  training  of  man's,  until 
they  work  instinctively,  281. 

Family,  the,  development  of  the  clan 
from  the,  227  ;  origin  of,  due  to 
prolongation  of  infancy,  227, 
288  ;  and  the  beginning  of  hu- 
man morality,  289. 

Fan-palms,  Miocene,  22. 

Father,  derivation  of,  103. 

Fear  connected  with  cruelty,  229. 

Feather  and  pen,  105,  106. 

Fee,  pecunia  and  pecus,  121. 

Feeling  and  molecular  motion  in  the 
brain,  256,  257. 

Ferns,  arborescent,  in  Carboniferous 
epoch,  5. 


Ferrier,  J.  F.,  his  minimum  tcibik 
per  ft,  302. 

Fick,  August,  his  Vergleichendet 
Jf^orterbuch  der  Indogcrmanische* 
SpracAen,  113. 

Fig-trees,  Miocene,  22. 

Finality,  craving  for,  266. 

Finland,  in  Silurian  age,  14 ;  in 
Tertiary  period,  26  5  b  glacial 
epochs,  30. 

Finnish  language,  as  the  language  of 
tribes  conquered  by  Aryans,  88  j 
belongs  to  the  Altaic,  Turanian,  or 
Tataric  family,  89, 138, 149;  how 
related  to  the  Turkish,  89,  151. 

Finno  -  Tataric  languages,  Aryan 
names  in,  120;  as  represented  in 
Europe  and  Asia,  149,  150. 

Finno-Tataric  race,  apparently  allied 
to  the  Aryans  and  Semites,  149, 
IS'- 

Fire-worshippers,  70. 

Fishes,  earliest,  5,  7. 

Fitzroy,  Robert,  captain  of  the 
Beagle,  312. 

Fixity  of  species,  theory  of,  disproved 
by  flora  and  fauna  of  the  Gala- 
pagos Islands,  318. 

Flamingoes,  Miocene,  22. 

Flint  knives  found  in  the  valley  of 
the  Thames,  3 1  ;  implements  of 
the  river-drift  men,  35. 

Flints  chipped  in  Miocene  age,  24. 

Florence,  a  political  and  intellectual 
centre,  142. 

Fly,  Aryan  words  for,  126. 

Fly-catcher,  instinct  of,  283. 

Foetal  life  of  a  mammal,  322. 

Folkmote,  177. 

Footprints  in  Connecticut  sandstone, 
6. 

Forces,  correlation  of,  254,  255, 
332. 

Fox,  Arctic,  Pleistocene,  29. 

France,  Eocene  primates  in,  1 8 ; 
flint  implements  in  Miocene  strata 
of,  24  ;  human  remains  in  Plio- 
cene strata  of,  27 ;  her  rivalry 
with  England,  291. 

349 


INDEX 


Freeman,    E.    A.,   on    history   of 

tic  ridge,  33  ;  on  alternations  of 

England  in    1066,    2  ;  his  study 

glacial  epochs,  57. 

of    Indo-European     politics     and 

Genesis,    Book   of,   relates   only  to 

jurisprudence,      130  ;     compared 

Semitic  race,  134. 

with  Macaulay,   176;  his  scien- 

Geniuses,   analogy    between    spon- 

tific spirit,  183  j  a  hero-worship- 

taneous  variations  and,  158,  161, 

per,  183. 

162;  mental,  159,  160;  relation 

Free-thinking,    and    eminent   men, 

of  environment   to,    162,    186— 

245  ;  and  Unitarians,  246. 

190  ;  influence  of,  on  mutations 

French  language,  as  a  Latin  language, 

of  society,  163  ;  Spencer  on  the 

85,  137  ;  kinship  with  the  Italian 

causes     of    the     production    of, 

perfectly  evident,  148. 

«73- 

French  people,  related  to  Spaniards 

Geographical  distribution,   facts   of, 

and  Italians  through  Keltic  ances- 

studied by  Darwin  in  the  flora  and 

tors   rather   than    through    Latin 

fauna    of  the   Galapagos  Islands, 

dialect,  90  ;  character  of,  injured 

315-319. 

by  persecution,  240. 

Geography,  zoological  and  botanical, 

Frobisher,  Martin,  82. 

the  study  of,  319. 

Froude,  J.   A.,   his   life   of  Csesar 

Geological  epochs,  relative  duration 

compared  with  Mommsen's,  182. 

of,  3,  5,  6. 

Fruits  cultivated  by  Neolithic  men, 

Geological  succession,  confirms  Dar- 

42. 

winian  theory,  3  1  9  ;  specialization 

Fulton,      Robert,      precursors     of, 

of  mammals  in,  320. 

185. 

Geology,  method  of  study  of,  178. 

German  language,   found  to  be  of 

Gaelic  language  a  division  of  Keltic, 

Indo  -  European    group,    79  ;     a 

84. 

branch  of  Teutonic  speech,  86. 

Galapagos    Islands,    their   flora   and 

German  Ocean,  in  Silurian  age,  14  ; 

fauna  compared  with  those  of  the 

in  Miocene  age,  21. 

adjacent    mainland    by    Darwin, 

Get*  as  Goths,  86. 

31S~31*' 

Ghosts,  of  dead  heroes,  and  poetry, 

Galton,  Francis,  on  physical  growth, 

185  ;  of  dead  chieftains  in  primi- 

308, 309  ;  author  of  Hereditary 

tive  philosophy,  229. 

Genius,  311. 

Glacial   epoch,   in  North  America, 

Garden,  derivation  of,  103. 

30,  58  ;  in  Europe,  30,  56,  58  ; 

Gases,  molecules  of,  297. 

droll's  astronomical  interpretation 

Gaudry  on  Miocene  man,  24. 

of,  48-65  ;    date  of,    calculated, 

Gaul,   Eocene,    1  6  ;  Miocene,  20  ; 

48,  58,  65  ;  causes  of,  48-56; 

language  of,  trampled  out  by  Latin, 

Agassiz  on,  58  ;  coincident  with 

84  ;  Roman  manners  of,  90. 

Pleistocene   age   in    Europe    and 

Gauls,  complexion  of,  94. 

America,  59. 

Geese,  Miocene,  22. 

Glacial  epochs,   30,   57,  59  ;  alter- 

Geikie,   Archibald,    on   position  of 

nations  of,  explained,  48—  57  ;  re- 

the great  oceans,  14  }  on  Silurian 

currence  of,    in   various   periods, 

rocks  of  Europe,    1  5  ;  on  geogra- 

59-61. 

phy  of  eastern  Europe  in  Pliocene 

Glaciation  of  northern  hemisphere, 

age,  26. 

30  ;  Croll  on,  48—65  ;  caused  by 

Geikie,  James,   on  position  of  the 

changes  in  the  earth's  orbit,  48— 

great  oceans,  14  j  on  the  Atlan- 

51,  56,  58,  60  j  by  earth's  stor- 

350 

INDEX 


ing  up  of  ice  and  snow,  51,  61  ; 

Grief  outside  the  circuit  of  physical 

by  formation  of  fog,  52  ;  by  flow 

causation,  254,  256. 

of  ocean  currents,    53—56,   645 

Grimm,   Jakob,   on  ancient   Thra- 

in  successive  periods,  59—61. 

cians,  86  ;  his  discoveries  in  com- 

Glutton, Pleistocene,  29. 

parative  philology,  132. 

Goat,    harbinger    of   the    dawn    of 

Grimm's  law,  illustrations  of,   103, 

civilization,  41. 

104. 

God,  man's  idea  of  his  justice,  206. 

Grinnell  Land,  perpetual  snows  of, 

Godfrey  de  Bouillon  and  social  con- 

62. 

ditions,  187. 

Grote,   George,  on  the  dialogues  of 

Goose,  derivation  of,  103. 

Plato,  246. 

Gorillas,  25  ;  as  the  forefathers  of 

Gulf  Stream,   54  ;    course  of,   55, 

man,  287. 

56. 

Gothic   language,    found    to   be    of 

Gutenberg,  Johann,  and  social  con- 

Indo-European group,  79  ;    as  a 

ditions,  187. 

division  of  Teutonic,  86  ;  extinct, 

save   for   a   portion    of    Ulfilas's 

Hache,  the,  of  the  river-drift  men, 

translation  of  the  Bible,  86. 

35- 

Goths,  diffusion  of,  in  the  time  of 

Hannibal,  environment  and,  186. 

Herodotos,  86. 

Hapta  Hendu    of  the    Zendavesta, 

Grains  cultivated  by  Neolithic  men, 

7*. 

42. 

Have,    conjugated   in   Aryan    lan- 

Grasmere,  meaning   of    the    word, 

guages,  IOI. 

128. 

Heat,  carried  by  Gulf  Stream,  55  j 

Great  men  and  environment,  185, 

discovery  of  the  mechanical  equiv- 

186. 

alent  of,  332. 

Greek  language,  similarity  between 

Hebrew  language,   unrelated  to  the 

Latin  and,    78,   85  ;  relationship 

languages  of    Europe,     78,    98, 

between  Latin,  Sanskrit,  and,  79  ; 

135  ;  once  considered  the  parent 

as  Hellenic,  85  ;  spoken  all  over 

of  all  languages,    135  ;  word  for 

the  East  at  time  of  Roman  con- 

six in,    135  ;  closely   related   to 

quest,  140. 

Syriac  and  Assyrian,  146,  147. 

Greeks,  as  Aryans,  76  ;  their  separa- 

Hecla, 21. 

tion   from    Italians  comparatively 

Hedgehogs,  Miocene,  22. 

recent,  8  5  ;  time  of  their  invasion 

Hellenic    languages,    as    the     fifth 

of  Europe,  85  ;  little  known  of 

grand   division  of  Aryan  speech, 

their  prehistoric  career,  85  ;  com- 

85 ;    close    relationship    between 

plexion  of,  94  ;  their  feeling  of 

Italic  and,  85  ;  divisions  of,  85. 

corporate  responsibility,  230. 

Hell-fire,   doctrine  of,    part  of  the 

Greenland,   in  Eocene  age,  \  6  ;  in 

theology   of  an   age   of   cruelty, 

Cretaceous,  1  6  ;  deciduous  trees  in, 

205. 

1  7  ;  covered  with  luxuriant  vege- 

Helmholtz,  H.  L.  F.,  as  a  genius, 

tation   in   Miocene  age,  21,  64; 

1  60. 

climate    of,   in  Pliocene,  26  ;  in 

Heredity,  the  important  factor  in  life 

Miocene,  64  :  perpetual  snows  of, 

of  the    lower   animals,    283  ;  its 

62. 

influence  modified  by  mental  plas- 

Gregariousness, Clifford  on,  301. 

ticity  acquired  by  infancy,    286  ; 

Gregory  VII.,  ecclesiastical  reforms 

illustrated  in  the  Darwin  family, 

of,  170. 

310,  311. 

351 

INDEX 


Heresiarchs  no  longer  found  among 
eminent  men,  245. 

Heresy,  on  the  word  becoming  obso- 
lete, 266. 

Hermae,  mutilation  of  the,  218. 

Herodotos,  Hellenic  language  of,  85. 

Heroes  of  Industry,  184-190. 

Herons,  Miocene,  22. 

Himalayas  in  glacial  epoch,  31. 

Hindus,  migration  of,  from  central 
Asia,  70,  72  ;  called  Aryans, 

73- 

Hindustan,  Indo-Persians  in,  72 ; 
dialects  spoken  in,  83. 

Hipparion,  Miocene  ancestor  of  the 
horse,  22 ;  still  lived  in  Pliocene 
age,  27. 

Hippopotamus,  African,  the  first 
species  to  survive  from  the  Plio- 
cene age  to  present  time,  27,  29. 

History,  Carlyle's  method  of  dealing 
with,  175  ;  revolution  in  the 
study  of,  during  the  nineteenth 
century,  175,  181  ;  sociology 
and,  175,  177,  181  ;  distinction 
between  study  of  sociology  and 
that  of,  178-182. 

Holland,  Sir  Henry,  cousin  of  C.  R. 
Darwin,  311. 

Holland,  Spanish  atrocities  in,  204. 

Honey  among  the  Aryans,  1 27. 

Hooker,  Sir  J.,  assisted  in  publica- 
tion of  results  of  voyage  of  Beagle, 
313;  scientific  achievements  of, 

3'9- 

Horse,  Eocene  representative  of,  18, 
19,  320  ;  the  link  between  man 
and,  18;  Pliocene,  27;  Pleisto- 
cene, 29  ;  harbinger  of  civiliza- 
tion, 41  ;  Aryan  words  for,  122- 
125  ;  is  teachable,  286  ;  domes- 
ticated by  man,  324  j  breeding 
of  the,  324. 

Horse-tail,  the,  in  Carboniferous  age, 

House,  Aryan  words  for,  114,  115. 
Humane  feelings  favoured  by  indus- 
trialism, 207-209. 
Humboldt,    F.  H.  A.  von,  began 


his  Kotmos  at  the  age  of  seventy 
five,  309. 

Hungarian  language,  brought  into 
Europe  by  recent  intruders,  89  ; 
whence  sprung,  89  ;  affinity  with 
Finnish,  89  ;  one  of  the  Altaic 
or  Finno-Tataric  family  of  lan- 
guages, 89,  138,  150. 

Huns,  invasion  of,  drove  Teutonic 
tribes  westward,  86. 

Hunter,  William,  burning  of,  205. 

Huss,  John,  103. 

Hussites,  their  puritanism,  241. 

Hutton   and  cockney  misuse  of  A, 

102. 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  his  lecture  On  a  Piece 
of  Chalk,  15  ;  his  Lay  Sermons, 
1 6  ;  On  Some  Fixed  Points  in 
Britiih  Ethnology,  95. 

Hyaena,  Pliocene  ancestor  of,  27  j 
Pleistocene,  29  ;  Recent,  41. 

Hygiene  and  intellectual  work,  293. 

Hypothesis  lies  at  the  foundation  of 
all  scientific  knowledge,  185. 

lapygian  language  possibly  an  aborigi- 
nal language  in  Europe,  88. 

Iberian  language  an  aboriginal  lan- 
guage in  Europe,  88. 

Iberian  race,  diffusion  of,  in  Neolithic 
period,  44  ;  intermingling  of  Aryan 
race  and,  46,  47  ;  antiquity  of  the 
time  of  their  invasion  of  Europe, 
65  ;  dark  complexion  of,  traced 
in  Indo-Europeans,  93. 

Ibex,  Pleistocene,  29. 

Ice,  earth's  storing  up  of,  51,  62. 

Ice  age,  in  Europe,  30 ;  in  North 
America,  30.  See  Glacial  period 
and  Glaciation. 

Iceland  in  Eocene  age,  16. 

Iguanodon,  6. 

Imagination,  its  effect  upon  conduct, 
197. 

Improvidence  of  savages,  198. 

India,  conquest  of,  and  establishment 
of  Indo-European  family  of  lan- 
guages, 78,  97  :  non-Aryan  tribtt 
in,  88. 


352 


INDEX 


Indian  languages,  found  to  be  of 
Indo-European  group,  79  ;  the 
first  grand  division  of  Aryan 
speech,  83. 

Indian  Ocean,  in  Tertiary  Period 
flowed  between  Europe  and  Asia 
into  the  Arctic  Ocean,  25,  63  ; 
effect  of  its  waters  on  the  climate 
of  Greenland  in  Miocene  age,  64. 

Indians,  North  American,  formerly 
thought  to  be  Mongols  or  ten 
tribes  of  Israel,  133  ;  indigenous 
to  the  continent,  133. 

Indians,  South  American,  language 
of,  156. 

Individual,  the,  his  rights  ignored  in 
primitive  society,  217  ;  recogni- 
tion of,  under  the  Roman  Empire, 
233  ;  responsibility  of,  233,  235, 
241,  262  $  recognition  of,  by 
Christianity,  235  ;  and  religious 
belief,  266. 

Indo-European  group  of  languages, 
established  by  study  of  Sanskrit, 
78  ;  idea  conceived  by  Sir  William 
Jones  in  1790,  79  ;  maintained 
by  Schlegel  in  1808,  79  ;  main- 
tained by  Bopp  in  1833,  80;  the 
name  established,  80  ;  designated 
as  Aryan  language,  80,  81  ;  an 
exclusive  and  interrelated  group, 
98.  Set  Aryan  and  Old  Aryan. 

Indo-Germanic,  Schlegel's  name  for 
Indo-European  group,  79. 

Indo-Persians,  80. 

Indus,  the,  70,  71. 

Industrial  arts,  rudimentary  begin- 
nings of,  185  ;  social  conditions 
and,  185  ;  political  stability  of 
society  and,  1 86  ;  extent  of  com- 
merce and,  187  ;  physical  science 
and,  187  ;  humane  feelings  fa- 
voured by,  207. 

Infallibility,  assumption  of,  213, 
215. 

Infancy,  prolongation  of,  an  impor- 
tant factor  in  man's  development, 
280,  287,  289  ;  development  of 
the  nervous  system  and,  285, 


287  ;  in  the  lower  animals,  285  j 
in  the  orang-outang,  285  ;  origin 
of  family  life  due  to,  288  ;  man's 
descent  from  the  highest  of  ani-« 
mals  due  to,  289. 

Infanticide  in  primitive  tribal  society, 
228. 

Infidelity,  the  word  becoming  obso* 
lete,  266. 

Ingersoll,  Robert,  and  corporate  re- 
sponsibility, 219. 

Inquisition,  the  origin  of,  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  240. 

Insectivora,  Eocene,  19. 

Insects,  earliest,  5,  7. 

Insurance,  fire,  in  illustration  of 
man's  tendency  to  provide  for 
the  future,  198. 

Intellect,  dawn  of,  in  the  Cave-men, 
66  ;  man's  acquisition  of,  67. 

Intellectual  progress  inseparable  from 
moral  progress,  197. 

Intelligence  and  moral  disposition  in- 
separable, 197,  200. 

Inventors,  the  great,  belong  to  mod- 
ern times,  184,  185  ;  environ- 
ment and  early,  185;  social  con- 
ditions and,  186-188. 

lonians,  45. 

Iranic  languages,  the  second  grand 
division  of  Aryan  speech,  83. 

Ireland,  Arya  not  the  root  of  the 
word,  80  ;  derivation  of  the  name, 
8  r  ;  Gaelic  language  in,  85. 

Iroquois  tribe  an  example  of  prim- 
itive society,  203. 

Isabella  of  Castile  and  persecution, 
194. 

Isle  of  Man,  Gaelic  language  still 
spoken  in,  85. 

Italian,  a  Latin  language,  85,  137  ; 
kinship  with  the  French,  perfectly 
evident,  148. 

Italians,  separation  between  Greeks 
and,  comparatively  recent,  85  j 
time  of  their  invasion  of  Europe, 
855  little  known  of  their  prehis- 
toric career,  85  ;  related  to  the 
French  and  Spanish  through  Kel- 


353 


INDEX 


tic  ancestors,  90  ;  complexion  of, 
94. 

Italic  languages,  found  to  be  of  Indo- 
European  group,  79  ;  the  fourth 
grand  division  of  Aryan  speech, 
85  ;  close  relationship  between 
Hellenic  and,  85  ;  divisions  of, 

85- 
Italic  races  and  the  tribes  of  Latium, 

90. 
Italy,  in  Miocene  age,    20  ;  vegeta- 

tion of,  in  Pliocene  age,  27. 
Jver  is  root  of  words  Ivernia,  Irish, 

and  Ireknd,  8  1. 
Ivernia,  derivation  of,  8l. 
Ivies,  Miocene,  aa. 

James,    William,    his   Great    Men, 

Great  Thoughts,  and  the  Environ- 

ment, 158. 
Japanese  language,  Aryan  names  in, 

1  20  ;  how   related   to  the  other 

Mongolian  languages,  152-154. 
Japanese  people,  complexion  of,  93  ; 

members  of  the  Mongolian  race, 

151. 
Jesus,  teachings  of,  point  to  individ- 

ual obligation,  235. 
Jews,  related  to  Arabs  and  Syrians, 

146  ;  their   feeling   of  corporate 

responsibility,  230. 
Jinghis  Khan,  150,  151. 
Jones,  Sir  William,  on  relationship 

between  Greek,  Latin,  and  San- 

skrit, 79. 
Julian,    Emperor,    and    persecution, 

194- 
Jurassic  epoch,  giant  reptiles  in,  6, 

7  ;  physical  contour  of  Europe  in, 


Kafirs,  complexion  of,  93. 

Kawi,  the  Malay  language  of  Java, 

full  of  Sanskrit  words,  1  24. 
Keltic  blood,  but  little  Keltic  speech 

among  the  English,  90. 
Keltic  geographical  names  scattered 

all  over  Europe,  84 


Keltic  languages,    found   to   be   of 


Indo-European  group,  79,  80  ;  at 
a  division  of  Aryan  speech,  83  ; 
now  fast  disappearing,  84 ;  two 
groups  of,  remain  in  the  present 
day,  84. 

Kelts,  their  invasion  of  Europe,  45  ; 
first  to  separate  from  original  Aryan 
tribes,  83,  84  ;  diffusion  of,  over 
Europe  under  Roman  dominion, 
in  Christian  era,  and  in  later 
times,  84. 

Khiva,  language  of,  89. 

Kjarda  Dhun,  meaning  of,  1 1 6. 

Knowledge  and  practice,  discrepancy 
between,  293. 

Kuhn,  Adalbert,  his  Beitrage  tatf 
•vergleichenden  Sprachforschung, 
III. 

Kurdish  a  division  of  Aryan  speech, 

«3- 
Kymric  language  a  division  of  Keltic, 

85. 
Kymry,  their  invasion  of  Europe, 

45- 

Lacordaire,  J.  B.  H.,  his  biography 
of  St.  Dominic,  191  ;  his  Etudes 
tur  la  {literature  contemporaine, 
191. 

Lafuente,  Modesto,  on  expulsion  of 
the  Moriscoes,  aa3. 

La  Mettrie,  J.  O.,  principles  of 
materialism  as  held  by,  253. 

Language,  epithets  applying  to,  used 
in  an  ethnological  sense,  89  ;  not 
a  sure  index  of  race,  89,  90  ; 
original  community  of,  95  ; 
former  unscientific  character  of 
the  study  of,  97,  98  ;  true  signs 
of  relationship  in,  97,  98  ;  diver- 
gence of,  102,  141-143,  145  ; 
the  science  of,  is  historical,  1 1 2  ; 
enables  us  to  reconstruct  civiliza- 
tion of  prehistoric  Aryans,  113  ; 
no  single  primeval,  135-139;  a 
universal,  probable  in  the  future, 
145  ;  of  savages,  changes  quickly, 

*55- 
Laplace,   P.    S.  de,   his  Mccaniqut 


354 


INDEX 


Celeste,  282  ;  on  molecular  mo- 

Lithuanian found  to  be  of"  Indo-Euro- 

tion, 297. 

pean  group,  80  5  a  division  of  Let- 

Lappish  a  non-Aryan  language,  88. 

tic  language,  87  ;  spoken  in  Baltic 

Latin   language,    similarity    between 

provinces  of  Russia,   87  ;  strong 

Greek  and,  brought  out  by  study 

resemblance  to  Sanskrit,  87. 

of  Sanskrit,  78  ;  relationship  be- 

Lizards in  Galapagos  Islands,  315. 

tween  Greek,   Sanskrit  and,  79, 

Lobatchevski,  Clifford  on,  307. 

149;  a  division  of  Italic  language, 

Lollards,  their  Puritanism,  241  . 

85  ;  spread  of,  over  western  Eu- 

London, meaning  of  the  word,  1  1  6. 

rope,  139,  140  ;  as  spoken  in  the 

Louer,  meaning  "to  hire  "  and  "to 

provinces,    140  ;    divergence    of, 

praise,"  104. 

into  dialects,  141,  142. 

Lugdunum,   meaning  of  the   word, 

Latin  race,  misuse  of  the  term,  90, 

1  1  6. 

92. 

Luther,   Martin,   his   revolt  against 

Latin  tribes,  45. 

the  church's  assumption  of  cor- 

Latium,   its  tribes   absorbed   in   the 

porate  responsibility,    241,    243, 

Italic  race,  90. 

262  ;  his  revolt  the  assertion   of 

Laurels,  Miocene,  22. 

individual  rights  and  responsibili- 

Laurentian epoch,  records  of  life  in, 

ties,  241. 

4»  7- 

Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  relieved  from  the 

Lemur,    Eocene    representative    of, 

necessity  of  earning  a  living,  312. 

18. 

Lynx,  Pliocene  ancestor  of,  27. 

Leopard,    Pleistocene,    29  ;    repre- 

Lyons,    vegetation    about,    in    the 

sentative  of,  in  Eocene  age,  320. 

Pliocene  age,  27  ;  meaning  of  the 

Lessing,   G.  E.,   his  theory  of  the 

word,  1  1  6. 

relative  truth  of  opinions  and  re- 

ligious development,  192. 

Macaulay,    T.   B.,    compared   with 

Lettic    languages,    as    the    seventh 

Freeman,  176. 

grand   division  of  Aryan  speech, 

Machairodus,   or  sabre-toothed  lion, 

87  ;  divisions  of,  87. 

23. 

Lettish,  as  a  branch  of  Lettic  lan- 

Madrid, depopulation  of,  223. 

guage,  87  ;  spoken  in  the  Baltic 

Magdeburg,    atrocities   of    the    im- 

provinces of  Russia,  87. 

perial  armies  at,  204. 

Leverrier,   U.  J.  J.,  on  changes  in 

Magian  religion  and  Mohammedans, 

earth's  orbit,  50. 

70. 

Lewes,  Mrs.  G.  H.,  200. 

Magnolias  in  Pliocene  age,  27. 

Ley  den,  meaning  of  the  word,  116. 

Maine,  Sir  Henry,  his  study  of  Indo- 

Life,  antiquity  of,  on  the  earth,  8. 

European    politics    and    jurispru- 

Ligurians as  Iberians,  45. 

dence,    130,    132;    his  method, 

Lindens,  Miocene,  22. 

176;  on  primitive  society,  217. 

Linear  classification  of  animals  im- 

Mammals, earliest,   5,    7  ;  Eocene, 

practicable,  321. 

1  6-20  ;  Eocene,    far  less  highly 

Lion,  sabre-toothed,  larger  and  more 

specialized  than  those  of  the  present 

fierce  than  our  lion  or  tiger,  23  ; 

time,  18,  19,  28,  320;  Miocene, 

the  ancestor  of  our  panthers  and 

22,  28  ;  Pliocene,  27,  31  ;   Pleis- 

lynxes, 27  ;  extinction  of,  31. 

tocene,  29  ;   migration   of  Euro- 

Lions,  in   Pleistocene  age,    29  ;  in 

pean,    in    Pleistocene    age,   32  j 

Yorkshire,  31. 

Recent,  41. 

Liquids,  297. 

Mammoth,  Pleistocene,  29. 

355 


INDEX 


Man,  not  found  in  Eocene  age,  I 8  ; 
his  presence  doubtful  in  Miocene, 
23-25  ;  found  in  Pliocene,  in 
Portugal  and  California,  28,  32, 
66;  in  river-drift,  31,  34-36, 
65  ;  in  caves,  34,  36-40,  65  ; 
Neolithic,  41  ;  significance  of  his 
great  antiquity,  66 ;  origin  and 
development  of,  66  ;  acquiring 
of  intellect  by,  67 ;  average  in 
mental  capacity  of,  159;  psycholo- 
gically transcends  the  highest  apes 
immeasurably,  280,  287  ;  pro- 
longation of  infancy  in,  280,  287  ; 
mental  plasticity  of,  289-291. 
Manatee,  rib  of,  24. 
Mandshus  of  the  Mongolian  race, 

151. 
Maples,    in    Miocene    age,   22  j    in 

Pliocene,  27. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  Emperor,  and  per- 
secution, 194. 
Margiana,  the  Muru  of  the  Zenda- 

vesta,  71. 

Marsh,    O.   C.,    on   mammalia    in 
Triassic  age,  5,6;  his  discovery  of 
the  atlantosaurus,  6  ;  on  palaeon- 
tology of  the  horse,  335. 
Marsupials,   Eocene,   1 7 ;  Miocene, 

22  ;  in  Australia,  320. 
Mary  Tudor,  persecutions  of,  232. 
Mastodon,  in  Miocene  age,   22  ;  in 

Pliocene  age,  27. 
Materialism,  as  a  term  of  abuse,  250  ; 
unintelligent  use  of  the  word, 
250 ;  legitimate  changes  of  mean- 
ing in,  250  ;  and  modern  philoso- 
phy, 251-257  ;  its  position  in 
regard  to  mind  and  matter,  252- 
257 ;  as  held  at  the  present  time, 
252,  253  ;  as  behind  the  times, 
253  ;  and  the  philosophy  of  the 
future,  257  ;  on  consciousness  and 
physical  action,  302. 
Maurer,  G.  L.  von,  method  of, 

176. 

Mead,  derivation  of,  127. 
Mecca,  competition  of  bards  at,  146 
Medes,  country  of  the,  72  ;  called 


Aryans  by  Armenian  writers,  74  j 
their  language  one  of  the  Aryan 
group,  74. 

Mediterranean  Sea,  in  Miocene  age, 
20  ;  in  Recent  period,  40. 

Mental  plasticity,  in  the  lower  ani- 
mals, 284,  286;  in  the  higher 
apes,  286 ;  man's  use  of  his, 
289—291. 

Mental  states  and  physical  action, 
303-306. 

Merv,  the  Muru  of  the  Zendavesta, 

Metaphysical  problems,  their  place  in 
the  philosophy  of  the  present  age, 
259. 

Metaphysics,  distinction  between  sci- 
ence and,  264. 

Middle  Ages,  communication  in, 
143  ;  excessive  cruelty  of,  ex- 
plained, 204. 

Midget,  meaning  of  the  word,  126. 

Military  discipline  of  primitive  society, 
290. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  his  essay  on  Liberty, 
213. 

Million  of  years,  our  inadequate  con- 
ception of,  10  ;  geological  work 
in  a,  ii. 

Mind-stuff,  character  of,  306. 

Minokhired,  Aryana  Vaejo  in  the, 

73- 

Miocene  age,  7  5  physical  contour 
of  Europe  in,  20  ;  climate  of  Eu- 
rope in,  21,  60  ;  vegetation  in, 
21,  22  ;  animals  in,  22  j  doubt- 
ful if  man  existed  in,  23-25  } 
glaciation  in,  60. 

Mississippi  Valley,  drainage  of,  12. 

Moguls  of  India  of  Mongolian  race, 
151. 

Mohammed  and  Arabian  civilization, 
171. 

Mohammedans  and  Magian  religion, 
70. 

Molecular  motion,  254,  255. 

Molecules,  Clifford's  description  of, 
296. 

Moles,  Miocene,  aa. 


356 


INDEX 


Mollusks,  earliest,  5,  7. 

Mommsen's  life  of  Caesar,  compared 
with  Froude's,  182;  sociological 
generalization  in,  182. 

Money,  Aryan  words  for,  lai. 

Mongolian  race,  in  northern  Asia, 
149,  151  ;  not  to  be  confounded 
with  Tatars,  150;  its  composi- 
tion, 151  ;  its  dialects,  how  re- 
lated, 151—154;  never  homo- 
geneous, 153. 

Monkeys,  intelligence  of,  286. 

Monotremes  in  Australia,  320. 

Monsoons  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  64. 

Month  in  Aryan  languages,  109, 
137. 

Moors  as  Iberians,  44.  See  Moris- 
coes. 

Moral  progress,  193—201. 

Morals  and  evolution,  276. 

Moriscoes  driven  from  Spain,  221, 
231. 

Morphology,  facts  of,  in  proof  of 
Darwinian  theory,  322. 

Mortillet,  Gabriel  de,  on  existence 
of  man  in  Miocene  age,  24. 

Mother,  derivation  of  the  word,  108. 

Mountains,  of  Europe  in  successive 
ages,  15,  1 6  ;  as  condensers,  61. 

Mouse,  Aryan  words  for,  126  ;  in 
Galapagos  Islands,  315. 

Miiller,  Max,  on  the  application  of 
the  term  Aryan  to  Indo-European 
group,  80  ;  his  Science  of  Lan- 
guage, 156. 

Mum,  creation  of,  by  Ahura-Mazda, 
69  ;  is  the  modern  Merv  or  Mar- 
giana,  71. 

Music,  rudimentary  beginnings  of, 
185. 

Musk-sheep,  Pleistocene,  29  ;  in 
southern  France,  31  ;  in  France 
and  England,  32  ;  companions  of 
Cave-men  and  Eskimos,  39. 

Mussulman  civilization,  171. 
Must,  an  Old  Aryan  word,  127. 
Myrtles,  Miocene,  22. 
Myth-makers,  names  of  the  earliest, 
unknown,  185. 


Natural  selection,  could  not  unaided 
have  originated  mankind,  280  ; 
discovery  of,  by  Darwin,  323— 
328  ;  coincidence  of  Wallace's 
and  Darwin's  discovery  of,  330. 

Mecrolemur,  18. 

Neolithic  age,  41 . 

Neolithic  men,  their  grinding  of 
stone  implements,  41  ;  their  civil- 
ization, 42  ;  their  domestic  ani- 
mals, 42  j  their  cultivated  seeds 
and  fruits,  42  ;  diffusion  of,  in 
Europe,  43,  44 ;  physical  char- 
acteristics of,  43  ;  identical  with 
the  Iberian  race,  44. 

Neptune,  planet,  coincidence  in  its 
discovery,  332. 

Netherlands  in  Eocene  age,  16. 

New  Zealand,  native  plants  and  ani- 
mals of,  supplanted  by  foreign, 
317. 

Newgate,  "  stone-hold  "  of,  done 
away  with,  207. 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  buried  by  the  side 
of  C.  R.  Darwin,  308,  336; 
C.  R.  Darwin  ranked  with,  326, 
336. 

Nice,  dialect  of  the  newspapers  of, 
142. 

Normandy  in  Eocene  age,  16. 

Norsemen  considered  a  violent  death 
the  only  honourable  one,  204. 

North  America,  in  Cretaceous  period, 
1 6  ;  joined  to  Europe  in  Miocene 
age,  21  ;  separated  from  Europe 
in  Pliocene  age,  26  ;  in  the  glacial 
epoch,  30  ;  repeatedly  joined  to 
Asia,  133. 

North  Pole,  temperature  of,  as  affect- 
ing ocean  currents,  55. 

North  Sea,  in  Pliocene  age,  26  ;  in 
glacial  epochs,  30  ;  in  Pleisto- 
cene age,  33  ;  in  Recent  period, 
40. 

Northern  hemisphere,  causes  of  glaci- 
ation  in,  48—56  ;  cause  of  change 
of  seasons  in,  48,  54  ;  climate  of, 
51,  56. 

Norway  in  Pliocene  age,  26. 


357 


INDEX 


Numerals,  in  Old  Aryan,  114;  in 
the  language  of  Tahiti,  156. 

Oaks,  in  Cretaceous  epoch,  6  ;  in 
Miocene,  22  ;  in  Pliocene,  26. 

Ocean-currents,  as  affecting  glaciation 
of  northern  hemisphere,  53—56, 
64 ;  as  produced  by  southern  trade- 
winds,  54,  64  ;  as  produced  by 
northern  trade-winds,  55. 

Oceans,  their  position  practically  the 
same  throughout  the  ages,  13  ; 
changes  in  contour  of,  14. 

Old  Aryan,  the  language  of  Aryana 
Vaejo,  8 1  ;  reconstruction  of, 
108-113,  137  ;  a  vocabulary  of, 
1 1  a,  113  ;  names  of  relatives 
in,  114;  numerals  in,  114.  See 
Aryan,  Aryans  and  Indo-Euro- 
pean. 

Old  British  as  a  division  of  Keltic, 
85. 

Old  Norse  as  primitive  form  of  Dan- 
ish, Swedish,  and  Norwegian,  82. 

Old  Prussian,  as  a  branch  of  Lettic 
language,  87  j  extinct  save  in  the 
Catechism  of  Albert  of  Branden- 
burg, 87. 

Ontology,  Spencer  and,  258  ;  inter- 
est in,  will  increase,  260. 

Opinions,  relative  truth  of,  192  ; 
improvement  in  character  of  mod- 
ern, 193  ;  on  religious  matters, 
225  ;  diversity  of,  a  guarantee  of 
healthy  intellectual  activity,  225. 

Opossum,  Miocene,  22. 

Orang-outangs  as  the  forefathers  of 
man,  287. 

Oriel  window,  118. 

Origin  of  Species,  the  process  of  its 
conception  traced,  315—328  ;  re- 
garded by  Darwin  as  a  preliminary 
outline  of  his  theory,  329  ;  the 
times  ripe  for  its  acceptance,  330. 

Origins,  present  age  wrapped  in  the 
study  of,  259. 

Origins  of  Protestantism,  the,  221. 

Ormuzd,  his  creation  of  the  sixteen 
countries,  68. 


Orthodoxies,  decomposition  of,  245  j 
and  individual  responsibility,  263. 

Oscan,  a  division  of  the  Italic  lan- 
guage, 85. 

Ossetian  of  Caucasus,  a  division  of 
Aryan  speech,  83. 

Our  Aryan  Forefathers,  68—96. 

Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  on 
Conditions  of  Progress,  1 70  ;  and 
sociology  of  Spencer,  170,  172  ; 
on  Buckle's  theory  that  changes 
in  Arabian  civilization  before  and 
after  Mohammed  were  due  to 
geographical  environment,  171  ; 
on  meaning  of  infancy,  279  ;  on 
consciousness  and  molecular  mo- 
tion in  the  brain,  303  ;  on  matter 
and  spirit,  307. 

Owen,  Sir  Richard,  assisted  in  pub- 
lication of  results  of  voyage  of 
Beagle,  313. 

Ox,  Pliocene,  27  ;  harbinger  of 
civilization,  41. 

Oxus,  the,  70. 

Pacific  islanders,  complexion  of,  93. 
Palaeolithic  age,  the  stage  of  culture 

known  as  the,  34. 
Palfrey,  origin  of  the  word,  123. 
Pali,  as  a  division  of  Aryan  speech, 

83. 

Palmettos,  Miocene,  22. 
Palms,    in  Jurassic    period,    6  j    in 

Pliocene  age,  27. 
Panther,  Pliocene  ancestor  of,  27. 
Parental   feeling,    its    origin   in  the 

prolongation  of  infancy,  289. 
Paris,    a    political    and    intellectual 

centre,  142. 
Parker,  Theodore,  on  the  justice  of 

God,    206  ;    and    free-thinking, 

246. 

Paroquets,  Miocene,  22. 
Parrot,  286. 

Parsi,  sacred  books  of,  68  ;  of  Bom- 
bay, as  a  division  of  the  Aryan 

language,  83. 
Parsis  or  Persians  in  Bombay  and  it« 

neighbourhood,  70. 


358 


INDEX 


Patois,  the  rise  of,  141-143,  145  ; 
the  decay  of,  143,  145. 

Pecunia,  fecus,  and  _/«,  relation  of, 
121. 

Pelicans,  Miocene,  22. 

Pen  and  feather,  relation  between, 
105,  106. 

Pepin  and  environment,  187. 

Perihelion,  earth's,  49,  50. 

Permian  epoch,  mammals  and  rep- 
tiles of,  6,  7  ;  glaciation  in,  60. 

Persecution,  causes  of,  191-220  ; 
logical  basis  of,  destroyed  by  Les- 
sing's  theory  of  the  relative  truth 
of  opinions,  1  92  ;  decline  of  the 
spirit  of,  192,  196,21  1  ;  decline  of 
manifestations  of,  192,  196,  210; 
Buckle's  theory  of  the  cause  of, 
1  94-1  96  ;  the  dogma  of  exclusive 
salvation  and,  195  ;  growth  of 
scepticism  diminishes,  196  ;  its 
decline  an  illustration  of  man's  in- 
tellectual and  moral  progress,  201, 
211;  cruelties  of,  204,  205; 
diminished  by  industrialism,  210  ; 
spirit  of,  originated  in  the  disposi- 
tion to  domineer,  21  1  ;  originated 
in  the  assumption  of  infallibility  ; 
213  ;  originated  in  the  desire  to 
enforce  religious  unity,  224  ;  the 
idea  of  corporate  responsibility  a 
cause  of,  218,  219,  230-232, 
261;  as  the  work  of  a  paganized 
Christianity,  239, 

Persian,  modern,  a  division  of  Aryan 
speech,  83  j  Arabic  words  in, 
100. 

Persian  Gulf  in  Tertiary  period,  25. 

Persians,  led  by  Ahura-Mazda  to 
Bombay,  70  ;  migration  of,  from 
central  Asia,  72  j  called  Aryans, 

73-. 
Peru,  its  flora  and  fauna  compared 


with    those    of    the     Galapagos 

Islands,  316-318. 
Peter  the  Hermit  and  social  condi- 

tions, 174. 

Pferd,  history  of  the  word,  123. 
Pheasants,  Miocene,  22. 


Philip  II.,  heretics  burned  at  his 
marriage,  204;  and  the  Spanish 
Armada,  231. 

Philology,  comparative,  78  ;  an  his- 
torical science,  112. 

Philosophic  attitude  of  the 
age,  259. 

Philosophy,  modern,  the  charge  of 
its  being  materialistic  refuted,  251— 
^257. 

Pianist,  training  of  the  faculties 
necessary  to  a,  281. 

Pig,  and  the  anchitherium,  18  ;  the 
harbinger  of  civilization,  41  ;  used 
as  money,  121  ;  domesticated, 
125,  324;  teachable,  286. 

Pigeons,  variety  in,  produced  by 
breeding,  324. 

Pines  in  Jurassic  epoch,  6,  15. 

Plasticity  of  mind  in  highly  educated 
people,  216. 

Pleistocene  age,  7;  vicissitudes  of 
climate  in,  29-31  ;  European 
mammals  of,  29-31  ;  river- 
drift  men  in,  31  ;  migration  of 
animals  in,  32  ;  coincident  with 
the  glacial  period,  59  ;  climate  of 
Europe  in,  60. 

Pliocene  age,  7  ;  physical  contour 
of  Europe  in,  25  ;  vegetation  in, 
26  ;  mammals  in,  27,  29  ;  man 
found  in  Portugal  and  California 
during,  28  ;  probable  antiquity  of, 
66. 

Po,  the  river,  its  work  hi  geological 
denudation,  12. 

Poetry,  rudimentary  beginnings  of, 
185. 

Polar  regions,  deciduous  trees  in  the, 
17- 

Polish  a  branch  of  Slavonic  speech, 
87. 

Political  economy,  the   truths   dealt 


with  in,  1  77. 
Pollock,   Frederick,  edits  Clifford's 

Lectures  and  Estays,  292. 
Poplars,    in   Miocene  age,   22  j    in 

Pliocene  age,  27. 
Portugal,    implements     of    human 

359 


INDEX 


workmanship  in  Pliocene  strata 
of,  28. 

Portuguese  as  a  Latin  language,  85. 

Positivism,  the  distinction  between 
science  and  metaphysics  drawn  by, 
264  5  and  unity  of  belief,  264. 

Power,  Divine,  manifestation  of,  in 
the  universe,  271  ;  and  right  liv- 
ing, 271  ;  asserted  by  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  274. 

Prakrit  language,  83. 

Priesthood,  need  of,  in  early  ages  of 
Christianity,  237. 

Priestley,  Joseph,  as  a  materialist, 
250  ;  friend  of  Erasmus  Darwin, 
310. 

Primary  period  in  geology,  relative 
duration  of,  3,  4,  7. 

Primates,  Eocene,  the  link  between 
man  and  horse,  18,  66. 

Progressiveness,  human,  as  aided  by 
prolongation  of  infancy,  279-289; 
as  achieved  by  mental  plasticity, 
289—291. 

Pronunciation,  differences  of,  102. 

Protective  tariffs,  177. 

Protestantism,  True  Lesson  of,  244- 
268  ;  of  early  Christianity,  236  ; 
state  of  society  which  preceded 
its  early  manifestations,  239,  240; 
as  protest  against  the  church's  as- 
sumption of  corporate  responsi- 
bility, 241,  243  ;  as  assertion  of 
individual  rights  and  responsibility, 
241,  247  ;  and  total  destruction 
of  religious  creeds,  246,  247  ; 
true  lesson  of,  266. 

Proven9al,  as  a  Latin  language,  85  ; 
A  patois,  143. 

Pumpelly,  Raphael,  on  the  cold  in 
Siberia,  62. 

Punjab  in  the  Vedic  hymns  and 
Zenda vesta,  71. 

Puppets,  a  world  of,  257. 

Puritanism  as  a  protest  against  the 
Pagan  corruptions  of  the  church, 
240,  241. 

Pushtu  of  Afghanistan,  a  division  of 
Aryan  speech,  83. 


Pyrenees,  in  Eocene  age,  16;  in 
glacial  epoch,  30. 

Quartzite  implements  of  the  river- 
drift  men,  35. 

Rabbits,  Pleistocene,  29 ;  Recent, 
41  ;  domesticated,  324. 

Race,  community  of,  95. 

Races  of  men,  succession  of,  in  Eu- 
rope, 46,  92. 

Recent  period,  geographical  structure 
of  Europe  in,  40 ;  mammals  in, 
41  ;  man  in,  41. 

Reindeer,  Pleistocene,  29  ;  in  south- 
ern France,  31  ;  Recent,  41. 

Relative  truth  of  opinions,  Lessing's 
theory  of,  192. 

Religion,  and  theology,  225  ;  essence 
of  true,  236  ;  human  speculation 
in  regard  to,  266,  267  ;  no  con- 
flict between  science  and,  249, 
276. 

Religions,  wherein  they  agree  and 
differ,  270 ;  presence  of  a  Divine 
Power  in  all,  271  ;  essential  truth* 
of,  271-274. 

Religious  belief  concerns  only  the 
individual,  266. 

Religious  unity,  the  aim  of  persecu- 
tion, 244,  261  ;  the  essence  of, 
225,  263  ;  is  undesirable,  260. 

Reptiles,  earliest,  5 ;  of  Jurassic 
epoch,  5,  7. 

Representativeness,  200  ;  and  self* 
control,  201. 

Rhine  in  Pleistocene  age,  33. 

Rhinoceros,  Miocene,  22  ;  Pliocene, 
27  ;  Pleistocene,  29 ;  extinct 
species  of,  31. 

Rhinoceros,  big-nosed,  contemporary 
of  man  in  Britain,  before  the 
Pleistocene  age,  34. 

Rhinoceros,  woolly,  29  ;  contem- 
porary with  the  Cave-men,  36  j 
extinction  of,  41. 

Ribeiro,  on  discovery  of  traces  "of 
man  in  Pliocene  strata  of  Portu* 
gal,  28. 


360 


INDEX 


Right  living,  and  Divine  Power  in 
the  universe,  271,  276  ;  asserted 
by  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  277. 

Rigidity  of  mind  in  savages  and  un- 
educated people,  215. 

River-drift  men,  34-36,  46  ;  con- 
temporary with  the  big-nosed 
rhinoceros  in  Britain,  31,  48; 
disappeared  from  Europe  in  later 
Pleistocene  age,  34  ;  stone  imple- 
ments of,  35  $  diffusion  of,  36  ; 
antiquity  of,  65. 

Rivers,  their  part  in  geological  denu- 
dation, 12. 

Rocky  Mountains,  and  geological 
denudation,  12  ;  in  the  ice  age, 

3'- 

Rodents,  Eocene,  19. 

Romanic  dialects,  what  they  illus- 
trate, 86. 

Roman  Empire,  the,  change  in  ideas 
of  social  obligation  under,  233  ; 
the  recognition  of  the  individual 
established  under,  233  ;  decom- 
position of  primitive  ideas  brought 
about  by,  234. 

Romans,  as  Aryans,  76  ;  their  feel- 
ing of  corporate  responsibility,  230. 

Roof,  Aryan  words  for,  117. 

Rubinstein,  A.  G.,  training  of  his 
musical  faculties,  282. 

Rudimentary  organs,  322. 

Rumansch  as  a  Latin  language,  8.5. 

Rupee  of  Bengal,  121. 

Russia  in  Tertiary  period,  25  ;  ec- 
clesiastical services  of,  written  in 
Old  Bulgarian,  69. 

Russian,  modern,  a  branch  of  Sla- 
vonic speech,  87. 

Russians,  central,  light  complexion 
of,  94. 

Samoyedic  race,  complexion  of,  93  ; 

in    northern    Asia,    149,    151  ; 

allied  to  the  Eskimos,  151. 
Sandalwood,  Miocene,  22. 
Sandwich,  meaning  of  the  word,  1 16. 
Sanskrit,  studied  after  the    English 

conquest  of  India,  78,  97  }  study 


of,  emphasized  similarity  of  Greek 
and  Latin,  78  ;  literature  of,  the 
oldest  in  the  world,  79  ;  a  sister, 
not  a  parent,  language  to  Greek 
and  Latin,  79  j  resemblance  be- 
tween Zend  and,  83  ;  words,  in 
the  Kawi  of  Java,  124  ;  word  for 
six,  135;  kinship  with  the  Latin, 
perfectly  evident,  149 ;  Vedic, 
one  of  the  Aryan  group,  74. 
Saporta,  Count,  on  deciduous  trees, 

Sapta-Sindha vas  of  the  Vedic  hymns, 
71- 

Sarasvati,  one  of  the  "  Seven 
Rivers,"  71. 

Savages,  their  want  of  forethought, 
198  ;  their  rigidity  of  mind,  199, 
215;  the  clan  their  unit  of  so- 
ciety, 2i  7. 

Scandinavia,  in  Silurian  age,  14 ; 
Eocene,  16  ;  Miocene,  21  ;  its 
shores  once  washed  by  the  waters 
of  the  Indian  Ocean,  26 ;  in  glacial 
epochs,  30. 

Scandinavian  language,  Teutonic 
speech  as  a  branch  of,  86. 

Scandinavians,  complexion  of,  94. 

Scherer,  Edmond,  on  contemporary 
literature,  191. 

Schlegel,  Friedrich,  conception  of  In- 
do-European family  of  languages 
first  reached  by,  79. 

Schleicher,  August,  his  reconstruction 
of  Old  Aryan,  no  5  his  Beitrage 
Kur  vergleichenden  Sprachfor- 
ichung,  HI. 

Schurz,  Carl,  at  the  farewell  dinner 
to  Spencer,  268. 

Science,  rudimentary  beginnings  of, 
185  ;  distinction  between  meta- 
physics and,  264. 

Scotch  divines,  Mr.  Buekle  on,  197. 

Scot-free,  meaning  of  the  term,  1 21. 

Scotland,  in  Cretaceous  period,  1 6  j 
in  Miocene,  21  ;  in  Pliocene, 
26 ;  Gaelic  language  still  spoken 
in,  85. 

Sea,  Aryan  words  for,  128,  129. 


INDEX 


Seasons,  cause  of  change  of,  in 
northern  hemisphere,  48. 

Secondary  period  in  geology,  relative 
duration  of,  3,  5,  7  ;  giant  rep- 
tiles in,  6. 

Sects,  formation  of  Protestant,  244  ; 
decomposition  of,  a  feature  of  the 
present  day,  245,  246. 

Sedimentary  rocks,  12  j  of  Europe, 

'5- 
Self-control   considered    as   a  moral 

attribute,  201. 
Semitic  languages,  futile  attempts  to 

prove  that  they  are  allied  to  Aryan 

languages,  135  ;  a  distinct  family, 

138,  146. 
Servian  a  branch  of  Slavonic  speech, 

87- 

Seville,  depopulation  of,  223. 

Shakespeare,  William,  and  social 
conditions,  174. 

Sheep,  harbinger  of  civilization,  41  ; 
used  as  money,  121  ;  domesti- 
cated by  the  Aryans,  125. 

Shetland  mountains  in  Pliocene  age, 
26. 

Shetland  pony  and  the  anchitherium, 
18. 

Siberia,  in  Tertiary  period,  25  ;  its 
cold  winters,  62  ;  languages  of, 
belong  to  the  Finno-Tataric  fam- 
ily, 150. 

Sicily,  brigandage  in,  208. 

Silk-moths  are  domesticated,  324. 

Silures  as  Iberians,  45. 

Silurian  period,  5,  7  ;  physical  con- 
tour of  Europe  in,  14  ;  glaciation 
in,  60. 

Simultaneous  discoveries,  331* 

Six,  Hebrew  and  Sanskrit  words  for, 

Slavonic  language,  added  to  Indo- 
European  group,  80 ;  as  the 
eighth  grand  division  of  Aryan 
speech,  87  ;  divisions  of,  87. 

Slavs,  their  invasion  of  Europe,  45, 
87 ;  as  Aryans,  76 ;  have  re- 
tained political  independence  in 
Russia  alone,  87. 


Slykick  force,  Clifford  on,  305. 

Snakes,  in  Galapagos  Islands,  3155 
rudimentary  hind  limbs  of,  322. 

Snow,  earth's  storing  up  of,  51  j 
perpetual,  confined  to  high  alti- 
tudes, 62. 

Social  object,  the,  as  presented  by 
Clifford,  301. 

Social  plasticity,  in  France  and  Eng- 
land, 291  ;  in  our  own  country, 
291. 

Sociology,  and  Hero-Worship,  158— 
183;  relation  of  the  environment 
to  the  genius  in,  162  ;  Spencer 
on  the  study  of,  165,  170;  the 
truths  dealt  with  in,  1 76  ;  study 
of,  concerned  with  institutions 
rather  than  with  individuals,  178, 
1 8 1  ;  distinction  between  study  of 
history  and  study  of,  178-182. 

Sogdiana  the  Sugdha  of  the  Zenda- 
vesta,  71. 

Solids,  298. 

Soul,  conscious  existence  of,  after 
death,  265,  307. 

South  Africa  as  part  of  Aryan  do- 
main, 82. 

South  America,  its  flora  and  fauna 
compared  with  those  of  the  adja- 
cent islands,  315-318  ;  successive 
appearance  of  sloth-like  and  arma- 
dillo-like animals  in,  320. 

South  Pole,  effect  of  its  temperature 
on  ocean-currents,  54,  64. 

Spain,  in  Silurian  age,  1 5  ;  in  Cre- 
taceous period,  1 6  j  brigandage 
in,  208  ;  economic  ruin  of,  dates 
from  the  expulsion  of  the  Moris- 
coes,  223  ;  warfare  for  religious 
unity  in,  223  ;  feeling  of  corpo- 
rate responsibility  at  the  root  of 
persecutions  in,  231. 

Spaniards,  related  to  French  and 
Italians  through  Keltic  ancestors, 
90  ;  complexion  of,  94. 

Spanish  as  a  Latin  language,  85. 

Spectrum  analysis,  simultaneous  dis- 
coveries in,  332. 

Speech,  no  such  thing  as  an  origin?' 

2 


INDEX 


unity  of,  135-1395  power  of, 
possessed  by  mankind  for  thou- 
sands of  centuries,  136;  com- 
munity of,  belongs  to  a  later 
rather  than  to  an  earlier  stage  of 
progress,  145,  157.  See  Lan- 
guage. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  his  Study  of  So- 
ciology, 165  ;  on  changes  in  com- 
munities due  to  the  mutual  ac- 
tions of  individuals,  165  ;  Outlines 
of  Cosmic  Philosophy  on  sociology 
of,  1 70,  1 72  ;  on  the  great-man 
theory  as  held  by  Carlyle,  173- 
I7S»  I7&>  181  ;  on  ontology, 
258  j  farewell  dinner  given  to, 
268 ;  immensity  of  his  work, 
269,  278  ;  on  care  of  the  body, 
293  ;  on  consciousness  and  molec- 
ular motion,  305. 
Spencerian  evolutionists,  170. 
Spencerian  school,  unwise  use  of  the 

term,  163. 

Spitzbergen,  in  Eocene  age,  16  ; 
deciduous  trees  in,  17;  in  Plio- 
cene age,  26  }  perpetual  snows  of, 
62. 

Spontaneous  variations,  analogy  be- 
tween   geniuses  and,    158,  162; 
in  species,  159,  160. 
Sportsmanship   esteemed    and    criti- 
cised, 208. 
Squirrels,  Miocene,  22  ;  intelligence 

of,  285. 
Stephanas  of  Byzantium  on  Thrace, 

80. 

Stephen,  Leslie,  edits  Clifford's  Lec- 
tures and  Essays,  292. 
Stone  age,  Old,  34  ;  river-drift  men 
in,  34—36 ;  Cave-men  in,  36— 
40 ;  New,  41  j  farmers  and 
shepherds  in,  41. 

Stone  implements,  of  the  river-drift 
men,  35  ;  of  the  Cave-men,  37. 
Stubbs,  William,  works  of,  176. 
Submergence,  in  Jurassic  period,  1 5  ; 
in  Eocene  period,  1 6 ;  in  Miocene, 
20. 
Sugdha,    creadon    of,    by    Ahura- 


Mazda,  68 ;  known  by  the  an- 
cients as  Sogdiana,  71. 

Swine,  Pliocene,  27. 

Switzerland,  in  Silurian  age,  1 5  ;  in 
Cretaceous  period,  16  ;  Miocene, 
20  ;  lake-villages  of,  42. 

Symbols  of  faith,  237. 

Sympathies,  human,  widened  by  in- 
dustrialism, 207. 

Syriac  language  closely  related  to 
Hebrew  and  Assyrian,  146,  147. 

Table,  as  a  group  of  states  of  con- 
sciousness, 300  ;  as  the  social  ob- 
ject, 301. 

Tahiti,  numerals  in  the  language  of, 
156. 

Tapirs,  Miocene,  22  5  Pliocene,  27  j 
representative  of,  in  Eocene  age, 
320. 

Target  shots  as  an  illustration  of 
variations  in  species,  161. 

Tartar  and  Tatar,  150. 

Tartaric  languages,  spoken  by  no- 
madic tribes  in  Asia,  89. 

Tears  and  grief,  254,  256. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  quotation 
from  his  In  Memoriam,  225. 

Tertiary  period  in  geology,  relative 
duration  of,  3,7;  aspect  of  na- 
ture in,  6,  8  j  northern  Asia  in, 

*5- 
Tertullian,  his  Credo  quia  impouibile, 

237. 

Teutonic  character  of  English  lan- 
guage, 100. 
Teutonic  language,   the  sixth  grand 

division  of  the  Aryan  speech,  86  j 

divisions  of,  86. 
Teutons,   their  invasion  of  Europe, 

45,  86  ;  as  Aryans,  76  ;  diffusion 

of,  from  the  time  of  Caesar  to  the 

fifth  century,  86. 
Theological  renaissance,  260. 
Theology  and  inscrutable  realities  of 

religion,  225. 

Thessaly,  brigandage  in,  208. 
Thomson,  Sir  William,  on  antiquity 

of  life  on  the  earth,  8. 


363 


INDEX 


Thracians,  ancient,  as  Goths,  86. 

Thumb,  Tom,  as  a  spontaneous 
variation,  159. 

Thun,  meaning  of  the  word,  116. 

Timbuctoo  negroes  in  Grant  Allen's 
theory  of  the  causes  of  social  pro- 
gress, 169,  173. 

Time,  geological,  divided  into  ten 
equal  periods,  8  5  duration  of 
periods  in,  8,  10  ;  our  inadequate 
conception  of,  10. 

Timur,  of  Mongolian  race,  151. 

Toledo,  Archbishop  of,  and  expul- 
sion of  the  Moors  from  Spain, 

»2I. 

Tortoise  in  Galapagos  Islands,  315. 

Torture,  theory  and  practice  of,  204, 
205. 

Toulouse,  a  political  and  intellectual 
centre,  142. 

Town,  Aryan  words  for,  116. 

Town-meeting,  177. 

Trade-winds,  54,  64. 

Trees,  deciduous,  in  the  Eocene  age, 
6,17. 

Triassic  epoch,  birds  in,  5,  7  ;  physi- 
cal contour  of  Europe  in,  15. 

Tribal  stage  of  social  organization, 
417.  See  Clan. 

Trinity,  doctrine  of  the,  as  a  symbol 
of  faith,  237  ;  a  less  important 
doctrine  in  religion,  273. 

Tungusians,  members  of  the  Mon- 
golian race,  151;  their  language, 
how  related  to  the  other  Mongo- 
lian languages,  151-154. 

Turanian  language  spoken  by  no- 
madic tribes  of  northern  Asia,  89. 

Turkish  language,  brought  into 
Aryan  Europe  by  recent  intruders, 
89  ;  one  of  the  Altaic  or  Finno- 
Tataric  family  of  languages,  138, 
1 50  ;  how  related  to  the  Finnish, 
151. 

Turkistan,  languages  of,  belong  to 
the  Finno-Tataric  family,  1 50  } 
formerly  called  Independent  Tar- 
tary,  151. 

Turtle,  instinct  of,  282. 


Tylor,  E.  B.,  his  doctrine  of  BUT- 
vivals,  132. 

Umbrian,  ancient,  a  division  of  Italic 
language,  85. 

Undulatory  theory  of  light,  simulta- 
neous discoveries  in,  332. 

Ungulata,  Eocene,  19. 

Unitarians  and  free-thinking,  246. 

Universe  of  Mind-Stuff,  292—307. 

Unknowable,  the,  applied  to  the 
eternal  Power  in  the  universe, 
275. 

Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  43. 

Ural  Mountains  in  Tertiary  Period, 
26. 

Urus,  pictured  by  the  Cave-men,  38  5 
in  Recent  period,  41. 

Valencia,  Archbishop  of,  and  expul- 
sion of  the  Moors  from  Spain, 
221,  231. 

Variations  in  intelligence,  159-161  j 
in  lower  animals,  284,  286  ;  in 
higher  apes,  286  j  when  seized 
upon  by  natural  selection  in  pre- 
ference to  physical  variations,  287. 

Variations  in  species,  159-161  ;  un- 
der domestication,  studied  by  Dar- 
win, 323,  324 ;  and  Darwin's 
discovery  of  natural  selection,  326. 

Veda,  and  Zendavesta  compared, 
73  ;  Aryans,  in  the,  74. 

Vegetation  of  Europe,  in  the  Eocene 
age,  17;  in  the  Miocene,  21  j 
in  the  Pliocene,  26. 

Velocities  of  molecules,  297. 

Vendidad,  Ahura-Mazda  in,  685 
legends  of,  113. 

feredus,  the  Low-Latin  post-horse, 
123. 

Verification  of  scientific  hypotheses, 
264. 

Vertebrate,  earliest  forms  of  fossil,  5. 

Viking,  meaning  of  the  word,  115. 

Village,  Aryan  words  for,  115. 

Virgin,  an  implement  of  torture,  205. 

Visceral  movements  organized  before 
birth,  283. 


364 


INDEX 


Vocabulary,  community  of,  not 
enough  to  establish  community 
of  language,  98—101  ;  of  words 
borrowed  and  of  words  derived, 
101,  102,  106,  107 ;  of  Old 
Aryan,  112,  113. 

Volcanic  heat,  action  of,  on  oldest 
rocks,  4. 

Volcanoes,  of  the  Atlantic  ridge  in 
Miocene  times,  21  ;  of  the  Brit- 
ish Isles,  21,  26. 

Voltaire,  F.  M.  A.  de,  and  social 
conditions,  174. 

Vowel-changes  in  Aryan  languages, 
108. 

Wales  in  Miocene  age,  21. 

Wall,  Aryan  words  for,  117. 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  his  Island  Life,  14, 
64  ;  on  snow  and  ice,  52  ;  scien- 
tific achievements  of,  319;  coin- 
cidence between  his  discovery  of 
natural  selection  and  Darwin's, 
330. 

Wallachian  as  a  Latin  language,  85. 

Walnut-trees  in  Cretaceous  epoch ,  6. 

War  engines  of  the  ancients,  188. 

Warfare,  necessity  of,  189  ;  decline 
of,  in  modern  times,  189,  207; 
decline  of  the  spirit  of,  190,  192; 
considered  criminal,  192  ;  modern 
methods  of,  more  humane,  192  ; 
in  primitive  society,  202,  290  5 
extinction  of  private,  207. 

Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother 
Tongue  ?  132-157. 

Waterhouse,  assisted  in  publication 
of  results  of  voyage  of  Beagle, 

3*3- 

Watt,  James,  and  social  conditions, 

187,    1 88  ;    friend   of    Erasmus 

Darwin,  310. 

Weapons,  laws  against  carrying,  208. 
Weasels,  Miocene,  22  ;  kept  by  the 

Greeks  and  Romans,  126. 
Wedgwood,    Hensleigh,    cousin    of 

C.  R.  Darwin,  311. 


Wedgwood,  Josiah,  grandfather  of 
C.  R.  Darwin,  311. 

Welsh  language  as  Kymric,  85. 

What  we  learn  from  Old  Arya« 
Words,  97-131. 

Whitney,  J.  D.,  on  presence  of 
man  in  Portugal  during  Pliocene 
period,  28;  h\a  Auriferous  Gravels 
of  the  Sierra  Nevada,  28. 

Whitney,  W.  D.,  on  Aryan  lan- 
guage, 80 ;  his  Study  of  Language, 
1 01  ;  on  the  political  organization 
of  the  primitive  Aryans,  130. 

Willows  in  Pliocene  age,  27. 

Windermere,  meaning  of  the  word, 
128. 

Window,  Aryan  words  for,  1 1 8. 

Wine,  an  Old  Aryan  word,  127. 

Witanagemote,  177. 

Wolf  and  the  Lamb,   fable  of  the, 

212. 

Wolves,  Pliocene,  27  ;  Pleistocene, 
29  ;  Recent,  41  j  representative 
of,  in  Eocene,  320. 

Wundt,  Wilhelm,  his  Physiologist  he 
Psychologic,  306. 

Ximenes,  Cardinal,  his  bonfire  of 
books,  148. 

Yakutsk,  temperature  of,  62. 
Youth,  period  of  physical,  according 

to  Francis    Galton,    308  ;  of  C. 

R.  Darwin,  308,  309. 
Yule-tide,  adoption  of,  239. 

Zarathustra  or  Zoroaster,  71. 

Zend,  one  of  the  Aryan  group,  74, 
80,  83 ;  resemblance  between  San- 
skrit and,  83. 

Zendavesta,  Ahura-Mazda  in,  68, 
70 ;  legend  of  the  sixteen  coun- 
tries in,  68,  70  ;  antiquity  of, 
69  ;  and  Veda,  compared,  73. 

Zoroaster,  prophet  of  Ahura-Mazda, 

Zoroastrians,  schism  among,  73. 


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